


To the Flower of Winter

by aesopeau



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M, yakuza!au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-14
Updated: 2017-01-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 04:23:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 84,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2136870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aesopeau/pseuds/aesopeau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the country that greets the sun first as it rises from the darkness of the world, a sakura tree blooms in the depths of winter. Soft pink buds unfurl as the flower greets the snow. Sousuke Yamazaki watched each nip bloom, rippling open from each branch. A wind blew and shook the tree, coaxing it to release the flowers from its stems. Sousuke watched with amazement, wondered how hard the wind would have to blow until a single blossom fell and touched him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I had this soumako fic bubbling in my head for a few days now and just /finally/ managed to type it all out now. I hope I'm doing my mind justice and I really hope this isn't too out of character for either Sousuke or Makoto. If it is, I really do apologize. Anyways, enjoy. Leave some feedback if you can and hopefully it doesn't take me forever and a day to type the next chapter. (Also, I also apologize if there are any grammatical errors and/or typos)

In the country that greets the sun first as it rises from the darkness of the world, a sakura tree blooms in the depths of winter. Soft pink buds unfurl as the flower greets the snow. Sousuke Yamazaki watched each nip bloom, rippling open from each branch. A wind blew and shook the tree, coaxing it to release the flowers from its stems. Sousuke watched with amazement, wondered how hard the wind would have to blow until a single blossom fell and touched him. 

 

_How beautiful_ , he thought as he stared at the gray and cloud covered sky with the delicate snow falling, flake by flake. The pink stood out in the drab world, almost glaringly so. It was much too saturated, too colorful for the middle of winter.

 

_How beautiful,_ Sousuke thought, _How cruel._ Why would something want to bloom during a time when it had no chances of surviving? Why would it want to exist in a world of eternal cold? The snow flakes dropped on his cheeks, his arms, his exposed chest. The ice stung against his body. If he looked he was sure his body was rotting, turning purple and being burned from the chill. 

 

Though despite his numbing body, Sousuke continued to watch the sakura tree continue to bloom. A weak smile crossed his lips. “If I’m going to die, I suppose it’s not so bad dying while watching you,” he spoke. His voice was hoarse and raspy, grating the cold air. His eyelids were beginning to feel heavier and heavier with fatigue. His heart beat throbbed much too slow and even the icy flakes did nothing to him as they fell incessantly.

 

As his eyes were about to close, shut finally, sleep finally, a voice rang out, “Who says you’re going to die?” The tone was unfamiliar, such a calm and strong voice. Concern laced itself between each word. “Who says I’m going to let you die?”

 

Sousuke tried to stop his eyes from closing shut. He stared at the sakura tree, its body smooth and a rich brown. The flowers became pinker and brighter the longer he stared. _Was the tree talking to me?_  

 

“I’m going to start him on his IVs now,” the tree spoke again. 

 

A south wind began to blow, violent this time shaking the branches, waking it. Some buds fell and drifted down to Sousuke’s arms. The petals pricked his skin, a terrible sting, letting the cold into his veins. Then the small buds twisted themselves into the small opening. His hands clenched themselves, turning themselves to fists by his side. He opened his mouth, tried to groan, scream, anything to ease the uncomfortable movement of the flowers slithering under his skin, mingling with his blood, going against its flow. 

 

A gentle breeze brushed his face. _So warm, so heavy._ “That’s good, but his temperature is pretty high,” the voice of the tree spoke again.

 

“What do you mean that’s good? There’s a fucking bullet in him. Can’t you fucking get it out now?” Sousuke’s ears pricked. The tone was familiar, the swearing more so. _Uozumi?_ His head couldn’t move, but he couldn’t even see a shadow in the midst of the winter storm. 

 

Sousuke saw nothing. Nothing except the white of the snow, the gray of the sky and the sakura tree. 

 

“We can’t do that in here. We have to wait until we reach the hospital first.”

 

_Hospital?_ Sousuke heard Uozumi scoffed, but was silent thereafter. _Hospital, hospital._ He stared at the tree before him, large and unwavering with its thin branches stretching out, scraping the heavens. 

 

He remembered finally. He remembered stepping out of the car, remembered one of the guys shouting a quick second after, remembered a sound. It sounded like fireworks being shot next to his ear, and his chest exploded with pain. Sousuke remembered stumbling back, remembered the stars look so clear and bright in Tokyo’s skies where one would normally would see nothing in the night sky except the moon, and even then it was hazy in its vividness. 

 

Ah, he was shot. And this is a dream. Sousuke laughed, maybe he laughed in the real world too. _How fucking cruel._  

 

• • •

 

Beeeep.

Beeeep.

Beeeep.

Beeeep.

Beeeep.

 

Sousuke grabbed the pillow beneath his head and tried pulling it over his ears. A pang jolted through his arm and his chest squeezed. Flinching, his eyes flickered open to a room too bright, a room not his. It smelled of disinfectants and lime-scented polished floors. The arm closest to his face had a white information tag on it. A hospital.

 

“Ah, I got shot,” Sousuke mumbled his realization. 

 

A chair scraped against the linoleum floors and gripped tightly onto his shoulder. “Boss, you okay? Should I call the nurse?” 

 

Rolling over, Sousuke released the grip of his pillow and laid on his back again. He stared at Uozumi’s face, etched with concern, his undercut hair mused with his fingers indicated that he clearly haven’t showered for days probably by how unkempt it looked. 

 

He waved his hand, gesturing he was okay though his chest did throb. _Probably where the gunshot was_. 

 

“Uozumi, I need a smoke. Take me outside.” Sousuke said as he slowly lifted himself off of the bed. 

 

The man hesitated for a moment, staring at his boss bewildered. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, boss. You just woke up and yo—”

 

Teal eyes flickered to the undercut lackey, glaring at him. The look sliced through the words that almost tried to slip out. “I need a fucking smoke, so help me or else I’ll do it myself.”

 

Uozumi nervously swallowed the lump at the back of his throat before he stumbled over to get the wheelchair from across the room and wheel it to the bed. Sousuke began pulling off the tabs and wires that connected him to the EKG machine. No longer did it beep with the rhythm of his heart. It gave a deafening ring, a flatline. 

 

The wheels of the chair were silent as they rolled down the hallways. Nurses and patients bustled throughout the corridor. Some of them caught a glimpse of Sousuke and quickly turned to their colleague to whisper. Sometimes he wondered if they knew who they were whispering about? A man who had someone else count his money for him, who wrapped his fingers around others’ necks to collect a debt. A man who sat in the shadows and watch power, greed, lust, and pride pluck their strings in others, sometimes within himself too. 

 

Would they whisper with so much glee in their tones and delicate blushes on their cheeks? 

 

Sousuke ducked his gaze, tired of everyone else’s movements and thoughts. They flooded him until he could no longer think to himself. In a low voice, but clear enough for Uozumi to hear, Sousuke asked, ‘“Do we have any details on who shot me?”

 

“None. The guys are out looking for the brat now. Boss, you don’t think another group is trying to send a hit after you, do you?”

 

Sousuke sighed, his hand clutching his chest through the thin hospital gown. The pain throbbed weakly, but slowly and steadily. If they managed to catch the arrogant bastard that did this, and maybe the one who called the hit in the first place, would the ache subside? Would he go back to how he was before? Another yakuza leader pulling the strings of sin in others and being pulled himself? 

 

_Fuck,_ his head began to throb. He just needed a cigarette right now. 

 

“You shouldn’t be out of bed! Takuya-san, I told you that he needed to rest.” It was the voice of the tree. The one that whispered to him, _I’m not going to let you die._ Sousuke quickly lifted his head and was greeted with a man with brown hair, eyes that held the color of a jade stone, green and endless. He wore a blue uniform, a cop? Looking closer, Sousuke noticed the Rod of Asclepius symbol on one of his patches displayed on his fitted and snug bomber jackets, a paramedic. 

 

“I’m sorry. I tried, but he’s a very…convincing man,” Uozumi answered with a weak laughter, obviously forced and nervous.

 

 The man’s lips curved into a frown, who knew such expressions could look so strange on someone’s face. _He doesn’t have a face for frowning,_ Sousuke thought. _He has a face that looks better with a smile_. A smile blooming on his face, blossoming until it reached those jade colored eyes. 

 

A smile that can only blossom.

 

The man reached out and held his fingers against Sousuke’s arm, feeling for his pulse. _Ah, there are those warm and solid hands again._ He had always been one to bruise easily on his arms. “Your heart beat is a bit fast.” There, there was that unfamiliar tone of concern. It sounded like the gentle rings of chimes during the summer months with the gentle breeze, sounded like the glee of someone who runs out in the rain after a year of drought. “You should probably head back to the room.”

 

“Just one quick smoke,” Sousuke answered. The ends of his lips curled upwards as he locked eyes with the man. “If you’re really worried about my health, you can join me and Uozumi.”

Why did he invite him? His eyes continued to watch, steadily, almost trying to lure the gentle man in. _Why?_ Why did he want him to enter this dangerous path that could leave only scars on the body and paranoia ticking against the mind? Why did Sousuke want him to so badly want to walk with him in this underworld where the sun could never reach, where winter was the only season? 

 

Why?

Why?

Why?

 

With a sigh, the man nodded once. “Okay, okay, I’ll join you, but only to make sure you’ll be fine. It’s dangerous, you know.”

 

Sousuke grinned. “I know. I knew from the beginning.” Of course his words caused the man to raise a brow, confused. He motioned for Uozumi to continue pushing him to the smoking area outside that overlooked the garden of the hospital. “I’m Yamazaki Sousuke, what’s your name?” 

 

“Tachibana Makoto.”

 

Makoto.

Sincerity.

Truth.

 

Truth that he could never reach.

Sincerity and compassion that he never felt.

Makoto, the voice of the tree that bloomed in the winter. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the country that greets the sun first as it rises from the darkness of the world, a dying man dreamed of a sakura tree, large and overwhelming, blooming in the midst of a winter storm. Of course, that was all a dream, a state of his mind drifting between life and death. That was what dreams were, wasn’t it? The brief glimpse of purgatory in his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well this got really lengthy, even though I suppose that's not a bad thing. I didn't expect this series to be a slow burn but it might turn out that way, though nothing is really set in stone. I'm hoping I'll be able to post a mixtape or something for this series soon, something to get a glimpse of how sousuke and makoto and their general lives will progress (and maybe i'm making it because i have no idea if this story will ever be completely "finished" knowing my track record, but i'm trying my best! 
> 
> anyways, i hope you guys enjoy. leave some feedback because really reviews fuel and motivate me a lot! sorry for anything out of character. sorry for writing a yakuza fic without much knowledge in that type of organized crime--i'm working off of what i remember i've read in other mangas. sorry for any typos or grammatical errors. sorry for so many sorrys!

In the country that greets the sun first as it rises from the darkness of the world, a dying man dreamed of a sakura tree, large and overwhelming, blooming in the midst of a winter storm. Of course, that was all a dream, a state of his mind drifting between life and death. That was what dreams were, wasn’t it? The brief glimpse of purgatory in his mind.

 

“I should be thanking you, Tachibana-san,” Sousuke began when they finally reached the small porch that faced the garden. Patients, nurses, doctors, friends and families strolled leisurely across the grassy plain. If he looked more closely, he could see Death walking alongside some, the ones with frail arms and legs, who looked down to the cracked cemented pathway rather than up at the clear blue skies. It strolled casually alongside the elderly who hobbled with skinny canes, easy to break under their weight. It hopped and skipped among caved in faces and glassy eyes. 

 

Sousuke casually turned his head, let his eyes look over his shoulder slowly. Maybe if he stared long and hard enough, he’d see its hand. Would it be bony or would it look like a normal hand, pink and fleshy, gripping onto his shoulder. If it looked normal, if it looked like his own hand, wouldn’t that be more frightening?

 

Normal hands that belonged to something not so.

Normalcy seizing his soul.

How far did he stray from normal? 

How closer did that bring him to death’s door?

 

Makoto stood by the metal railings that sectioned off the porch area, just a few steps away from the stairs that led down to the garden. He turned to look over at Sousuke and the smile he had been anticipating spread across Makoto’s face, though it seemed too…polite, though his words sounded genuine, “I was just doing my job. There’s no need to thank me, but seeing you so well like this, it’s enough of a thank you.”

 

Nonetheless, Makoto Tachibana had a face for smiling.

 

Sousuke continued to watch Makoto, observe how he quickly shifted his gaze back to the passerbys, watched the subtle reactions that crossed his face whenever a child cried, or an old woman laugh, or even when Sousuke coughed—though he did it deliberately to catch his attention again. How smooth those green eyes were that shifted to the corner to watch Sousuke without turning is head. How quickly those brows furrowed, and how deep those slight creases between them would become if he worried over everyone and everything. 

 

When those green eyes locked onto his, Makoto’s eyes widened as he quickly turned back to his original sight. Sousuke wanted to laugh, but he feared it would embarrass the paramedic even more. If he was out here making sure the patient was all right, why was he not even _watching_ him, but averting his gaze? Intrigue continued to scratch at him, brush against his legs and command his attention like a stray cat yearning for forgotten touches. 

 

“So, that’s all I have to do to be grateful to you? Live?” Sousuke asked, curious. 

 

Makoto didn’t turn to look at him, but from his profile, he could still see the delicate lift of his lips. _Another smile._ He could collect those smiles and burn them in the darkness of his minds, like stars. “That’s all. In my line of work, you’d be surprised how unpredictable it is to determine whether the person will live or die. They could die in the ambulance while under my care, or they can die in the hospital several days later. I won’t even know until a nurse tells me by off chance after remembering my name on the chart I signed.” 

 

_The voice of the tree sounded so lonely,_ Sousuke realized. How many people have died in that cramp space? Did he whisper the same words to them as he did to him? Did they fail? Did the winter burn their bodies? Did death grip their soul with his friendly human hand while Makoto Tachibana tried to resurrect a body desperately with the few things he had beside him?

 

“I-I’m sorry. I said a bit too much there,” Makoto stuttered and stumbled over his words as he quickly turned to face Sousuke, one hand gripping the metal rails so tight his knuckles were white while the other was extended, waving his hand to brush away the words that lingered in the air. 

 

But loneliness was stifling and not even the strongest of winds could blow it away so easily. 

 

Sousuke looked down as he smiled, a small laugh escaped. Even the sound of his breath shaking like this sounded so foreign. When was the last time his body felt so relaxed that his heart said, _It’s okay to enjoy this moment._ So strange, this sensation. It almost made him want to cry.

 

With a beaming smile, one that reached from ear to ear, one that had crows stamp their feet at the corners of his eyes, crinkling the bridge of his nose, Sousuke answered, “I can’t guarantee I’ll live, but I’ll try. I don’t understand, but maybe you’ll help me understand.”

 

“Y-you don’t have to make th-that sort of promise,” Makoto began stuttering again. Sousuke noticed the faint blush that coated his cheeks. If the summer sun was out, he would have thought it was a feature from the heat, but the dusty red reached Makoto’s ears. 

 

A silence drifted between them, comfortably wrapping its arms around the two while they waited for Uozumi to return with the carton of cigarettes. 

 

Finally, Makoto spoke up again as he turned back Sousuke. The blush had long faded from his face and ears. 

 

“What do you do for a living, Yamazaki-san?”

 

“Entrepreneur. I dabble in small businesses,” he answered vaguely. 

 

“And the gunshot?”

 

Sousuke fell silent. Makoto Tachibana might be a nice man, someone easy to talk to, someone who oozed compassion and concern like the breath of God, but he was still a stranger. He might have saved him, but that was just his duty, part of his Hippocratic oath not to deny treatment, not to turn down saving a life when he had the means to. 

He had his own oath too. The oath that bound him with a lit match dangling over his head and his body drenched with gasoline. If he extended his hand just a little, touched Makoto Tachibana’s sleeve, the gasoline would spread and the fire could consume the both of them.

 

And he wanted that, wanted to drag someone else down with him.

Tell him that he did what he had to do under his circumstances.

These steps were logical.

These steps were justified.

 

But he didn’t want that.

He wanted someone to pull him out.

Rub a towel over his dripping hair and whisper that he’s safe now.

That those steps were in the past.

That those steps were made out of desperation and he was not at fault.

 

Glancing up, he looked at Makoto Tachibana who also turned his head to look at him with eyes that saw a clean canvas with just a small tear that could be patched up easily. 

 

What did he want to do? Where was this desire for Makoto to help him come from?

A representation of life in the cold of winter? It was just a dream, a dream on the brink of death. It was just purgatory in the mind, a delusion. Something that could be easily forgotten by the morning or several mornings later. Whichever the case, it will fade and hold nothing over him just as this childish outreach. 

 

“I was just an innocent man caught in the crossfire,” Sousuke lied easily. 

 

His tongue was trained for such hidden words, that was how he survived after all. That was how he continues to exist in the deadly game of the underworld, how he pushed against the winter winds. That was how he got promoted. That was how he became a man that others sharpened their own lies to, a wet stone to their knives. The bullet the other day was just another day of practice. 

 

Makoto opened his mouth to stay something but refrained himself and turned his back to Sousuke again when he heard the familiar clacks of Uozumi’s shoes returning from the store with the cigarettes in his hands. 

 

He wondered what he was going to say.

He wondered why he was mesmerized by those lips.

He wondered, wondered and gained nothing out of it.

 

Uozumi handed Sousuke the cigarette he had asked for and a light ready. Placing it between his lips, he leaned in to the flickering flame, glowing a seductive red. When the filter began to burn, Sousuke leaned away. He took in a deep breath, sucked in the burn of the tobacco and nicotine. The smoke coated the inside of his mouth, let it crawl and ease slowly down his throat and filling up his lungs.

 

Only now did he feel his old skin slip back on, felt the days return to how they usually were. Uozumi had walked over to Makoto and patted the medic heartily on the broad back. He laughed as he asked whether his boss scared him off yet with those cold eyes, said God probably shaped and sharpened them enough to scare demons away. Sousuke didn’t bother chiding Uozumi as he let his complaints tumble away, trying to casually airing it as jokes, but he had heard all their back talk before. But they respected him and that was all he needed out of his men. 

 

Closing his eyes, Sousuke parted his lips and let the white wisps of smoke escape, exhaling slowly. His fast pulse had calmed, the wound forgot to throb or maybe he had just forgotten that the small ache still jolted with each heart beat. Well, whatever. 

 

“Female and Male victim on the corner of—” A static voice entered. Sousuke’s eyes flickered open and tried to find where the startling sound came from. It was the gesture of Makoto reaching into his waist where the radio was clipped that he realized it was a dispatch call. 

 

Two people in a car accident, it repeated at a scene three miles from here. Injuries unknown. 

 

Makoto responded quickly, releasing his grip on the railing and briskly walking past Sousuke. A slight breeze carried his scent, something strong yet calm. The scent of sweet grass before the rain. And a hint of something bitter, metallic. An odor familiar, blood. 

 

_Are you an angel, Makoto Tacibana or a reaper?_

 

His heavy footsteps grew fainter and Sousuke was sure he was gone until a voice called out to him, “Yamazaki-san.”

 

Sousuke turned half of his body in the chair to glimpse at Makoto standing halfway, one leg on the porch still and the other already inside the hospital building. 

 

“I know this isn’t something someone in the medical field should say, but…”

 

Sousuke raised a brow, intrigued with what Makoto had to say, already seeing the blush creeping up again. What made him stop and turn around? What was so important that two lives could easily be put on hold for? 

 

“How you smoke, it’s quite beautiful.”

 

His eyes crinkled as he gave a beaming smile. Brilliant, dazzling, intoxicating. Too saturated, too filled with life in a dying world.

 

And Sousuke’s body shook with laughter as the paramedic left. He laughed loud, ringing and clear. He was sure Makoto could hear him. Even if he didn’t, his voice, his laughter probably tried to catch up with him anyways. 

 

“What’s with that? Smoking beautifully?” Sousuke mumbled between his catch of breath. The bullet wound pounded again, and he was glad. 

 

It reminded him that he was alive. 

• • •

A bridge of black coated backs. With lowered heads and strong voices, they spoke in unison, “Welcome back, boss!”

 

Tucking his hands into the pockets of his navy fitted pants, he walked straight ahead. Over two weeks in the hospital and several days since he last spoke to Makoto Tachibana, Sousuke was back on his feet and back to work—though one should call it a return to a lifestyle instead. His teal eyes glanced over each head. Lowered for their subordination. Lowered for their failure. Lowered as if judgment was weighing down on them like an anvil.

 

And with each one he passed, in his rich dark blue suit with black lapels, they lifted their heads. A dark blue that forgives them, washes their shame, but reminds them that they have a duty. If he turned around, he was sure the sight would be reminiscent of the Christian story of Moses, the man who parted the sea and let it fall behind his people, drowning his enemies. The sea of men with desires in their bellies parted before him as they bowed and buried his enemies as they straightened their backs again.

 

This was the order of his group.

This was how one stayed alive in the game.

 

Sousuke ducked inside the building, a exclusive bar that he owned, a front for his true work naturally. Uozumi guided Sousuke quickly, though naturally the gazes of patrons and customers flickered over to the shift in atmosphere and the undeniable overwhelming presence of Sousuke Yamazaki. 

 

While they walked swiftly, Uozumi finally spoke up, “The boy’s in the back, boss.” 

 

Even though he was a carefree and outgoing guy, Sousuke found Uozumi’s focus and professionalism when it came to work valuable and even a bit refreshing compared to the rest of the members who joined to flaunt their status, Samezuka in the underground definitely carried a lot of weight and reputation after all.  

 

But flaunt it wisely, he always said. If not, it might get you killed. 

And no one will spare the minutes to mourn you because such a large organization doesn’t stop its productions and transactions for a man who got rowdy over his liquor and sliced in the throat after picking a fight with someone he could never beat. In a colony, the queen will not seek revenge. She’ll find a replacement. 

 

That was the order of the group.

That was how one maintained power. 

 

The sounds of voices grew quieter and quieter the farther they went in. The warmth of the bar began to fade as well. Slowly, it was replaced with a chill as they entered the old freezer room, now used as a temporary interrogation cellar. 

 

Sousuke walked in casually, unbothered by the manufactured cold. His skin was used to it. Underneath the well tailored and expensive blue suit, his body was rotting, turning pink to purple to black the longer he laid in the ice, flakes made of deception, blood, and indifference. This was nothing. This was a hurricane during hurricane season, a fire started by a poorly stubbed cigarette. This could not hurt him, not anymore. Among the crowd of his men in their uniforms of black suits and thin ties, a guy with wrist tied together with zip ties, swayed as he dangled on the hook attached at the top of the ceiling—probably once used to hang large meats. The boy was already beat up pretty badly, his eyes swollen shut, lips split with dried blood coating his chin and droplets of it on his white shirt, several sizes too big.

 

“Looking good, sir. Maybe you should go to the hospital more, you’ve come back with a bit more color to your face,” quirked another one of Sousuke’s right hand men, Minami. The lean man with his arm wrapped around the shooter’s neck smiled, a wolfish grin.

 

Sousuke let Minami ramble as he always did. If Uozumi was stoic and professional at work, Minami would be his opposite. Perhaps that’s why the two of them worked well together, opposing forces that played off each other. 

 

The crunch of frost and ice under Sousuke’s polished black shoes made the boy flinch. Though he couldn’t see, he could sense the darkness approaching him, eating away any linger hope he held on. Sousuke stopped, standing a step away. 

 

“Whose pig are you, huh? Tell me who ordered the hit.”

 

The boy’s body shook. The hook rattled along with him. Sousuke wondered if he was trying to cry and couldn’t because he had no more tears or how bad the swelling was. 

 

“You crying or pissing yourself?” Sousuke asked, his voice monotone and expressionless. “I asked you a question. Who ordered the hit?”

 

The chubby lips parted. Spittle coated the corners of his lips. “P-please let me go. I swear I don’t know. I just got a call and an envelope with cash and instructions. I-I se-swear I didn’t know this was—that I was ordered to take out someone from Sa-samezuka. Please, that’s all I know. Th-that’s the truth. I don’t know.”

 

Truth.

Doesn’t Makoto mean truth? 

 

Sousuke briefly wondered if he would know how honest the shooter was. Tired of the sound of whimpering and the pathetic crying, he turned on his heel. 

 

Uozumi hesitated before asking, “What do we do with the boy?”

 

“An eye for an eye,” Sousuke answered as he crossed the door. “See if he can survive a bullet to the heart too. And if he can, maybe he should enter the lottery.” 

 

“No, please. I promise I’ll do anyth—” his voice was muffled by the time Sousuke was halfway down the long corridor. 

 

_I need a smoke_ , Sousuke contemplated as he licked his cracked lips. Rubbing the nape of his neck, he wandered back to the laughter and the warmth of alcohol and ignorance. But, his feet didn’t stop there. It continued to move forward, outside to the bustling street, stepping inside the SUV he just got out of, returning to purgatory. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He sucked long and deep, let his lungs expand with the smoke, making his chest rise with the inhale. Slowly, he parted his lips, let it slip out of his mouth and drift into the air. Leaning onto the metal railing, Sousuke watched a woman in her late 50s, kiss the head of a young boy with dark hair and hazel eyes. He smile was weak, almost forced. His eyes looked like tears would fall soon. His hand tried to reach up and touch his mother’s hair, but curled in upon itself when he decided not to. 

 

A scent of grass before the rain and the rust of blood came by with a breeze. Sousuke smiled as he brought the cigarette to his lips. 

 

“What are you doing here, Yamazaki-san? Didn’t you get discharged already?”

 

“Check up,” he lied. _Just wanted to see you_. 

 

“Ah, I see,” Makoto answered. The brunette leaned on the railing too, his face now easier for Sousuke to see in the corner of his eye. “How did it go?”

 

Sousuke shrugged. “Good, though the wound’s going to scar.” It was going to scar anyway with the amount of time he picked at the scabbing. He didn’t want it to fade, if it faded, people would forget that Sousuke Yamazaki survived. 

 

“It’s a nice scar,” Makoto answered. 

 

Cocking his head, Sousuke raised a brow as he glanced over. “A nice scar?”

 

Makoto’s voice rang with a bit of laughter, “I can tell how it’ll turn out. You can kind of guess after seeing so many.”

 

“So? How does my scar look?”

 

“Like…a flower with sharp points on its petals,” he answered. 

 

Sousuke ducked his head as he let one hand fall to his neck and rubbed its nape. He placed his arm in a way to hide the slow red that was creeping up to his cheeks.

 

_A beautiful scar, huh? A flower born in death._  


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On an island that rested on the edge of the round world, greeting and parting first with the sun that rose and entered the darkness of the world, Sousuke Yamazaki, the man who dreamed of a sakura tree that bloomed in the coldest and bitterest winter storm, unintentionally acted upon desire, desire that made him walk down the busy corridors of the hospital though he was in pristine health, desire that made him known face around the staff there—especially the nurses who had a keen eye for expensive suits and white button downed shirts and caught the flash of his gold watch that peeked through his sleeve whenever he took a step forward. This desire had him digging in his pants’ pocket by the time he crossed the threshold of the hospital and the porch outside that led to the garden. Desire motioned him to take out the silver cigarette case and made him pluck one out from the row of seven. Desire made him strike a match, burn the filter, take a long drag, and exhale slowly, calmly with eyes closed and body at peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this chapter is much much longer though I'm skeptical on how much better that makes it. If it feels a tad rushed, I'm sorry. My brain just really wanted to get the ball rolling or else this story would never end! On that note, I hope you can enjoy the chapter! Leave some feedback and reviews because those really fuel my desire to write faster--so far I've been updating every two days which isn't bad. Hopefully, I won't lose the momentum. With that said, sorry for general writing errors with grammar and typos. Apologies for any out of character-ness.
> 
> Sidenote, the mixtape is done! If you want to follow along with the story (especially parts that have yet to be written down), you can check it out here: kytsunee.tumblr.com/tagged/mixtape 
> 
> I'm linking the tumblr post because the note explains a few things about the songs chosen, etc. So, I hope you enjoy that too! 
> 
> And....I think that's all. One day these notes are going to be as long as the story. Eeek!

On an island that rested on the edge of the round world, greeting and parting first with the sun that rose and entered the darkness of the world, Sousuke Yamazaki, the man who dreamed of a sakura tree that bloomed in the coldest and bitterest winter storm, unintentionally acted upon desire, desire that made him walk down the busy corridors of the hospital though he was in pristine health, desire that made him a known face around the staff there—especially the nurses who had a keen eye for expensive suits and white button downed shirts and caught the flash of his gold watch that peeked through his sleeve whenever he took a step forward. This desire had him digging in his pants’ pocket by the time he crossed the threshold of the hospital and the porch outside that led to the garden. Desire motioned him to take out the silver cigarette case and made him pluck one out from the row of seven. Desire made him strike a match, burn the filter, take a long drag, and exhale slowly, calmly with eyes closed and body at peace. 

 

Sousuke Yamazaki realized this desire because he walked down the same path, caught the same eyes, smoked half a cigarette before nine in the morning at the very spot all just to hear a voice tuned with compassion and warmth, catch a glimpse of eyes the color of jade stones that reminded his heart why emperors of the past adorned themselves with the jewel, and let him catch the twitch of the smile again—though his eyes were beginning to discern how forced some were. 

 

Pursing his lips as he exhaled, Sousuke lifted his wrist to look at the time. 9:10, it read. Like clockwork, he turned his head slightly to the side to be able to see the door frame from the corner of his eye. Like clockwork, he heard the doctors and nurses greet him. Like clockwork, he’d reach the door, a bit breathless from rushing—though Sousuke had told him there was no need—and a childish smile splayed across his face, crinkling the corners of his eyes as he added the small tilt of his head.

 

Makoto would say, “Hope you haven’t been waiting long, Yamazaki-san.”

 

And Sousuke would tell him he just got here because he did, because he had timed it so he wouldn’t have to wait long. He was after all a busy man, busy in business, busy in listening to the internal bomb strapped to him ready for another round of the ambush a few weeks ago, busy in avoiding unnecessary interaction that didn’t offer him any gains.

 

_What gains did the presence of Makoto Tachibana bring?_ Makoto too would ask why he came around so often. He would lie and say that he was in the neighborhood and thought he’d find some friendly company. The question continued to linger, however, haunt him every time he returned. Sousuke would often ask himself again and again, between the first and second inhale of smoke. By the intake of the third, he had given up. Sousuke could not profit from Makoto Tachibana. And yet, he didn’t care. For once, logic was the least of his concern. _Is this what it means to be a proper human being?_ He hoped like a wife standing on the widow’s walk, standing on the balcony of her home and stared out into the sea, hoping for her lover to return. But, the sentiment disappeared by the end of the day. 

 

Everything about Makoto Tachibana disappeared when he was several streets away in his dark tinted SUV, looking over transaction reports and profits they drew in with neighborhood security. 

 

But for the moment, he indulged himself, indulged in the desire for a beer when his taste buds aligned more with whiskey and the occasional bourbon. 

 

Clockwork, Makoto would let out a gentle sigh of relief and say, “Thank goodness.” 

 

Clockwork, the two would wander down the steps, following the cement walkway, head towards the coffee shop that greeted them at the end of the route. Their walk was always silent, but comfortable. Once in a while, he would catch Makoto glance over at him, trying to be secretive as his eyes lingered on the smoke leave Sousuke’s lips. He would quickly look away when he felt the appropriate allotted time had pass. Sousuke would muse on whether or not he would make proper eye contact, make the paramedic blush like the first time they properly met. After all, the hint of red around his ears proved to be a good color on the man. Of course, this would be the result of Sousuke’s mood for the day. A few steps and they’d be in the cafe. Sousuke would order black iced coffee. Makoto preferred a vanilla latte, two shots of expresso if he was coming off a night shift. 

 

Clockwork, they would pick up their orders and walk to the third bench by the maple tree, the only tree with the most leaves still intact during this time of year. They’d sip their coffee, sitting side by side. Makoto and Sousuke would exchange some pleasantries such things like the weather, how sweet the coffee today tasted, whether that made them sound older than they were. Sousuke would end up laughing, quirk his head to look at the flicker of that warm smile, genuine and radiant. Eventually, Makoto would unintentionally lose to his fatigue, fall asleep for a few minutes before startling himself awake again when the expresso finally circulated in his bloodstream. His face would turn into the color of a ripe tomato and the stuttering apologies would continue for five minutes. But, for those brief moments when Makoto entered that wonderful land of sleep, Sousuke learned that Makoto Tachibana had long lashes when he closed his eyes, small freckles on the bridge of his nose that could only be seen properly if you leaned close—almost a fingertip away, and breathed quite softly from his parted lips. 

 

Today, however, they did not sit on the third bench closest to the maple tree. Makoto did not fall asleep, perhaps because the caffeine was working faster than usual. And Sousuke  Yamazaki did not get to reflect how a man could look so beautiful asleep. 

 

Makoto’s thumbs stroked the coffee cup’s sides, his feet shifting constantly, crunching the fallen leaves under his scuffed brown boots. Something was bothering him, that much was clear. Sousuke tried to keep silent, sip his black coffee and pretend to watch the scenery even if all there was to see was dying trees and dying people. Silence should have been comfortable between them, it always had been. 

 

Sousuke bit the bullet and leaned back into the bench, tilted his head up to stare at the blue sky that was cut with the bare branches of the tree and calmly asked, “Are you okay, Tachibana?”

 

He didn’t have to look. He could hear it. Makoto shifting to look at him, smiling as if the question was the beginning works of a nostalgic joke and answer back, “Of course I’m fine. You’re asking weird things, Yamazaki-san. Honestly…”

 

Maybe he hated the break in routine.

Maybe he hated that Makoto Tachibana was acting like his men.

Lying to him.

Lying with the damn fucking smile at _him_. 

 

Sousuke leaned forward again, purposefully keeping his head low to avoid eye contact, avoid seeing that fucking forced smile that a child drew on their parents because he wanted others to believe he had a happily family while the reality crumbled beneath his feet. He placed his drink by the foot of the bench. The cleaning crew will throw it out later. He just needed to leave. 

 

Slowly, he got up, shoving his hands into his pockets.

 

“Yamazaki-san?” Makoto called, confused as he watched Sousuke stand up. “Is something wrong? Do you feel sick?”

 

The question churned his stomach. He let out a strained and breathless laugh. 

 

“Ugly,” he responded with his hand held over his mouth.

 

“What?”

 

“That damn smile of yours is ugly. It actually makes me sick.”

 

Makoto didn’t say another word. Sousuke never turned around. He began walking back towards the hospital again, heading to the car parked outside. 

 

He checked the time.

 

10:45.

 

Clockwork. 

• • •

Sousuke Yamazaki realized it first when he had paced because he paced as he thought, paced as he looked over the transaction log, paced as he tried to occupy his mind with other things more crucial like the detectives that sat before him with interlocked hands placed on their laps. 

 

They hunched forward as they spoke with serious faces only those in the police force could carry, “Have you seen this man?”

 

One of the detectives with buzz cut hair and a department suit store pulled out a photo from the pocket inside his jacket. He slid it across the coffee table. Sousuke didn’t have to look who was the face in the photo, he could already guess. But to amuse them a bit, he lifted himself off from the chair and slid the photo closer to him. He looked like an average gangster without the split lip and the swollen eyes. 

 

“Never seen a man like this in my life,” Sousuke answered as he slid the photo back. He was, after all, telling the truth. He had never seen a cleaned up man like this before, only bruised and bloody and unrecognizable. Maybe if they asked if he saw a pig that looked like a man before, he might have said yes. 

 

The detectives didn’t seem convinced as they urged him to remember. “A few witnesses said they saw him enter this business.”

 

“I don’t remember faces,” Sousuke lied. He only remembered one face that was burned onto the back of his eyelids. A face that smiled, but did not. A voice that saved him, but also did not. An average person who he had embellished with curiosity and desire that made him look like a god. 

 

“Well, we found him in a back alley in the red light district. However, no one knows how he got there. We came to ask and see if you or your workers might have seen him enter this establishment with another person.”

 

_Kabukicho, huh?_ Sousuke wondered if it was Minami or the men he ordered that were getting lazy in disposal. He’d have a word later.

 

A knock interrupted the detectives words, desperate for a lead it was obvious. Uozumi crossed the room and whispered to Sousuke all for an act for the inspectors. Sousuke glanced at his watch and got up, fastening the button of his suit. “You’re more than welcome to ask my workers, so long as you don’t get in the way. I would love to answer more of your questions however it seems I have a prior engagement I have to attend to.”

 

He nodded once towards them. “Minami outside will guide you on your way out. Good day, gentlemen.”

 

With reluctance, the two left with disappointment heavy in their steps. How strong was their sense of justice? How violent did their instincts scratch and gnaw at them, telling them that they were right, that the man before them was the man they needed to arrest? How terrible did it feel that they could do nothing with their sense of justice? 

 

Uozumi and Sousuke exited the building and entered the black car again. 

 

“The boy’s name is Oreki Takashi. See if you can find a connection from that,” he commented quietly from the back. 

 

Uozumi replied with a curt, “Understood.”

 

Watching the city pass by through the tinted window, Sousuke drifted into a slumber, not realizing how tired and how sleepless his nights were until the familiar scenery brought him back memories of a pleasant routine. 

 

It was the gentle sound of the sirens that woke him up with Uozumi’s voice drifting in loudness as it called out to him. “Boss.”

 

Slowly, he rose from the darkness of his dream. For once, a dream he couldn’t remember, but he knew it felt lonelier than usual. Sousuke looked out of the window and noticed the familiar sight of the hospital building, one he hadn’t seen in a while. One he wasn’t expecting to see now either.   
  
‘What are we doing here, Uozumi?“

 

And the man answered as if it was obvious. “It’s almost nine. You have your smoke break with Tachibana-san around this time, don’t you?”

 

He glanced down at his watch. It was a few minutes before nine. His tongue suddenly felt parched for his iced black coffee and his lungs desired the taste of nicotine, and his ears wanted to hear him say how he smoked beautifully again. 

 

Sousuke knew he could just slip back into the routine again. His words would be forgotten in the breeze of the day. Makoto would smile again at him and tell him it was a long time no see. Sousuke would wonder whether the smile he’d be greeted with would be the ugly one he saw last time.

 

Fake. Forced. Reserved for people who could never get close to him.

 

But desire and clockwork moved him, made him get out of the car and walk down the bustling hallway. He was prepared to go out to the porch, smoke half a cigarette and wait until he came. He was prepared to walk down the steps and follow the pathway to the coffee shop at the end. He was prepared to drink his coffee on the third bench closest to the maple tree, the only tree with the most leaves during this time of year. He was ready to catch Makoto fall asleep. He was ready for that peace again.

 

With long strides, he walked down the corridor and passed the information desk.

 

“Yamazaki-san?” a female voice called. Sousuke turned around, saw a young woman half standing, half sitting. Her eyes widened with glee and surprise. He didn’t know her name, never bothered to remember any of their names. “Are you here for Tachibana-san?”

 

“Yes,” Sousuke answered, “I was going to head out to the garden right now.”

 

She giggled at him, as if he was foolish for saying that, for expecting everything to stay the same. Routine was for the normal. Routine was for those who didn’t lie and expect truth, who kept distance but expected a strange intimacy. 

 

With a smile, she pointed towards down the hall pass the garden and towards the back exit. “He hasn’t gone out there in a while. You’ll probably find him in the parking lot. He should be back from his shift about now.”

 

Sousuke nodded as he thanked the girl whose name he could and would never remember, turned and walked down the hallway. His teal eyes steadily stared at the red sign illuminating he word “exit.” The closer he got to reaching it, the quieter and quieter it became. Finally reaching the door, he pushed it open finding rows and rows of ambulance trucks parked. Which one was Makoto’s, he could never guessed. Paramedics hung around, taking their breaks or catching up on their sleep before their next call. It was hopeless to look for Makoto if he wandered about so he walked over to a friendly group playing mahjong on a small table, clearly not meant to fit so many people.

 

“Excuse me, I was wondering where I can find Tachibana Makoto?”

 

The old man with salt and pepper hair leaned back and squinted as he looked around. “Tachibana, Tachibana….”

 

“He’s out and around the corner,” another piped in as he placed a few dominos down. His mouth grinned. “Talking to a girlfriend, too. Young love, huh?”

 

The information sounded foreign. 

Makoto and his girlfriend. 

Around the corner—always out of reach.

 

Sousuke thanked them, walked in that direction slowly. The desire for coffee faded. His lungs wanted fresh air for once. His ears felt like poison had been slipped into them and they were beginning to eat away at his brain.

 

_You’re a masochist. Why do you care? He’s a man. Of course he has a girlfriend. You’re a commitment-phobe and only have sex partners. Is his happiness really making you that jealous? Did you really want him to be like you? A lonely, lying bastard?_

 

He couldn’t even find logical replies to his own questions. All he heard was a slow and steady thump that got louder the closer he got. And all he heard was silence when he heard a woman’s voice. How deafening silence became. Sousuke stood at the frame of the entrance, hidden from their sight. The woman was beautiful with dark hair that tumbled down and the curled ends rested gently on her breast. Her skin was tan from the sun, but smooth. Maybe she looked so beautiful because she stood beside him. Her arms were wrapped around his neck, one hand rested gently on his cheek. She ran her fingers through the side of his brunette hair, stroked circles with the pad of her thumb on his cheek. 

 

“Come over tonight, okay? I’ll make your favorite for dinner.” Her tone suggested more than just dinner, her body suggested more, her presence suggested more. More of everything, more of Makoto. More, more, more. And that snake slithered into his brain again. 

 

“Sure,” Makoto answered. 

 

That was enough for him. Enough for Sousuke to turn on his heel, enough for him to walk back to the hospital with his head lowered and his eyes dark with a disappointment he didn’t realize he could muster until now. He entered the car, surprising Uozumi for being back so soon.  

 

“Drive,” Sousuke ordered, tired of talk, tired of words that would only poison his ears.

 

He massaged his temples as he leaned back into his seat, rubbed his eyes shut and could only see Makoto’s girlfriend press her slender body to his, see her peel off their clothes, see her push him down onto the bed. That was all he could see, all he could see after their dinner. 

 

His chest felt tight. But he kept his eyes closed anyways. 

 

_Masochist_. 

 

 

 

 

 

“Want me to help get it up?”

 

Sousuke had been laying in his bed for the past half hour, staring at the ceiling. Wanting sex, but not wanting it like this. The call girl laid beside him, pressed herself against him. Her hands slithered down his chest, down his stomach, down until she took a hold of his cock in her hands. 

 

“I can’t do this,” he muttered, though he didn’t stop her. At least not yet. “I keep seeing…someone else.”

 

“Lovesick, huh? Then close your eyes. Picture them.”

 

“It’s not right,” Sousuke answered, tired. _Not right to love him or not right to love?_

 

The girl smiled. “What part of this world is?”

 

Defeated, he closed his eyes and imagined. Imagined how far along Makoto and his girlfriend reached, were they eating dinner now, was she giving him the same pleasure? He imagined Makoto’s broad shoulders flexing as his body arced. He imagined how deep or shallow his pants were, how hard his fingers could grip. 

 

Sousuke imagined because that was all he could do.

 

Imagine, imagine and never touch.

 

If Midas turned his daughter to gold, his touch would burn the flesh off of him. Turn the man into just bone and hollow eyes. 

 

And like clockwork, that smile would never smile again, those eyes would only hold traces of green and his voice would drown in the howling winds of the bitter winter storm.  


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Sousuke thought, he didn’t really think. When his mind wasn’t numb with pleasure and ecstasy, when his mind was not numbed with figures and reading over detail assets, when his mind returned and belonged to him again, it became a clock, continuously ticking down, down, down.
> 
> One day.
> 
> Two days.
> 
> Nine days.
> 
> Two weeks.
> 
> Three weeks.
> 
> Three weeks, six days and 17 hours.
> 
> That was the last time he had seen Makoto Tachibana with his girlfriend who invited him for dinner, said she would cook his favorite dish—he wondered what that could be most likely something simple, but also delicious—and touched him in a way only a lover could, only a woman could.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So far, this is one of my favorite chapters to write. Mainly because everything's starting to lead up to the more exciting bits and plus I had a pleasant time imagining Seijuurou Mikoshiba in a well fitted suit, sporting a gun around. So, I hope you enjoy this chapter! Please leave comments, reviews and feedback if you can! I'd love to see what you guys think about the chapter, what you're hoping to expect in the next, etc. Thank you, guys!

When Sousuke thought, he didn’t really think. When his mind wasn’t numb with pleasure and ecstasy, when his mind was not numbed with figures and reading over detail assets, when his mind returned and belonged to him again, it became a clock, continuously ticking down, down, down.

 

One day.

Two days.

Nine days.

Two weeks.

Three weeks.

Three weeks, six days and 17 hours.

 

That was the last time he had seen Makoto Tachibana with his girlfriend who invited him for dinner, said she would cook his favorite dish—he wondered what that could be most likely something simple, but also delicious—and touched him in a way only a lover could, only a woman could. 

 

Three weeks, six days and 17 hours since that encounter. But another clock ran in his mind. It read six weeks, six days and 17 hours. The last time they spoke. The last time he snapped. The last time he drank the hospital’s iced black coffee and smoked half a cigarette as he waited for someone. They did not speak another word since then. 

 

It was then that Sousuke realized how much of strangers they were. He didn’t know his number, or his contact address. He didn’t know where he was from, if he had siblings, or what his favorite color was. All he knew is what strangers knew. His name, the color of his eyes, his job, his smile, his voice.

 

_Ha, his voice_. He hadn’t heard it in so long, Sousuke was forgetting what it sounded like. It had been so long ago, he stopped dreaming of the sakura tree that bloomed in the winter. He doesn’t remember his dreams anymore. All he knows is that he wakes up in a cold sweat, in a bed more often than not occupied by another naked body pressed to him. In the dark, while Sousuke continues to tread the thin line of loneliness, fear, and sleep, he believes that the skin that brushed against him, clinging to him belonged to that of Makoto. But, the curtain would shift with the slightest of breeze, and the moonlight—if the clouds did not cover it—would slip through, illuminate the body beside him, stretch and reach the body’s face and he’d see that it was not Makoto Tachibana, but someone else. Another stranger. A stranger he used and was used by.

 

This time he had started sleeping with men, slender with pale skin—not in the least bit lean with muscle or who carried themselves straight with broad backs. Men with eyes that held no color except for the eyes they reflected, and if they were ever green, they were green with the wad of bills rolled and waved before them.

 

That was the closest to green that they’d ever get and even then, they’d pale and fade away. 

 

Sometimes, some men didn’t even need the money. Whichever strangers he found who were willing and handsome, and equally desperate for touch but not the touches from the ones they loved, he brought to the nearest hotel. 

 

“Sex in the middle of the day. You’re shameless,” the man beside him chimed after they were done. He ran a hand through his hair, a brown darker than Makoto’s. He glanced over at Sousuke who was already half off the bed pulling up his black boxer briefs and searching for his jogging pants that he had slid off and thrown somewhere on the floor. 

 

Sousuke didn’t look over. The man’s voice was just as much as a filler of the silence in the room as his own voice in his head, a mind that lost a voice and had only recorded and timed the days and weeks since he last saw a person whose face will eventually begin to grow hazy and whose words had already slipped away. 

 

“Shameless, huh?” 

 

_Yeah, I am shameless._ Feelings of shame, feelings of remorse and regret, feelings of humiliation and anxiety. They were just burdens. They were heavy cement blocks that clung to his feet. And he’d be standing at the edge of a pier, and someone will push him over into the sea. And he’d sink without so much of a scream or a desperate plea for help. Because the cement blocks that weighed him down and dragged him to the bottom where light could not even touch him were reminders. _This is what you get for letting it exist within you, letting it expose you, letting people use you._

 

While slipping on the pants that stuck to him like a second skin, Sousuke felt slender ams wrap around his neck, felt rough lips brush against his neck, felt a chest pressed against his back. “Leaving so soon? Since we’re shameless, how about another go?”

 

One side of Sousuke’s lips lifted into a smirk, a smirk out of habit. “Sorry, I only got time for one.” _Lie_. “Maybe if we run into each other again, we’ll continue.” _Lie_. 

 

“Ah, too bad,” the man pouted with his answer, his arms slowly releasing his hold on Sousuke. “Hey, give me a cigarette.” He felt the mattress bounce a bit as the man flopped down, stretching and tugging at the sheets.

 

“How’d you know I smoke?” Sousuke asked, a bit surprised. So surprised, he almost turned, almost looked at the man, almost let his mind see a face twice, look twice if he wanted to remember.

 

The man chuckled. “Your clothes reek of it. You smoke like a train, don’t you?”

 

Sousuke reached down to his black track jacket, slipping his hand into the pockets and pulled out the silver case. Seven cigarettes nestled inside. He threw it gently back until it fell on the bed. “Here.”

 

“Thanks.” The case clicked open, and shut again. “Here you go.” 

 

The cold of the metal brushed against his skin. The man tapped it twice on Sousuke’s shoulder. He shifted his gaze down to it, how it glinted. _How you smoke, it’s quite beautiful._ What was so beautiful about something burning and letting the ashes rest in his mouth? 

 

Sousuke brushed the case away from him and stood up, slipping on his shirt and jacket and stepping into his running shoes. “Keep the case. I don’t need it anymore.”

 

“Seriously?” the man asked dumbfounded. “You sure? This case is really nice and probably costs a lot.”

 

His feet had already reached the door. His jacket already zipped up halfway. “Yeah, keep it. I’ve already quit smoking.” Sousuke Yamazaki did not look back, did not remember the man’s face, did not miss the heavy silver metal case that held the cigarettes he had refilled everyday for the past six years, did not notice his hands tremble at the mere thought of quitting cold for the first time. He expected the worst, if anything could be worse than this. Nothing could be worse than having his feet filled with cement and pushed over into the sea, going down, drowning because he was strung by love—certainly the worst exposure of weakness of them all. 

 

• • •

“Where’s that little fucker, Yamazaki?” a booming voice echoed from across the room. 

 

The bar quieted down. All the customers stopped drinking, stopped chatting, stopped laughing their expensive troubles away and glanced over at the tall man with mused red hair, slicked back only because he ran his hands through it so often who lead a group of at least six other men all in dark suits and postures as stiff as soldiers. 

 

Sousuke got off from one of the stools and slowly walked over, recognizing the voice but not sure he could trust his ears anymore. It was poisoned and rotting for the past month and a half now, started with words that should never have been said. 

 

The gold eyes caught sight of Sousuke in his tailored gray suit, and immediately broke into a large and wide smile, a smile that flashed such a vicious white grin that it could only belong to Seijuurou Mikoshiba. The second in command of the Samezuka group, the man that had brought him in, had saved him from the heat of the fire and gave him a world of ice instead. “Long time no see, Sou-chan!” He laughed as he slung an arm around Sousuke’s neck, pulling him in. 

 

“Why do you still call me that? I told you, I don’t like it.”

 

Seijuurou’s smile never ceased to fall. “You always act as if you have a metal rod stuck up your ass. Calling you Sou-chan makes you just a tad cuter. C’mon, don’t fight it. Keep acting like that and none of the girls would come near you.”

 

“Don’t need ‘em,” Sousuke replied as he pulled away from the chokehold. “Don’t need anything like relationships. It just gets in the way.”

 

“Now, now, someone sounds a little pent up,” Seijuurou teased, laughing as he patted Sousuke’s back. Once, twice. 

 

Twice for we need to talk.

 

Sousuke’s teal eyes shifted to look over at the empty bar and led his mentor over. Over the counter, he grabbed the bottle of whiskey and two tumblers. With ease, he began to fill the cup. 

 

“Always know what I like,” he answered with a sly smile, taking his cup and swirling the liquor in it slowly. 

 

“You’re a creature of habit.”

 

“Maybe, this old dog can surprise you,” Seijuurou commented, still swirling, still not drinking. Those motions alone surprised him. 

 

Sousuke took a slow sip of his drink, savoring the taste, savoring the burn, savoring any taste that could get rid of his desire for burnt ashes. He stopped smoking and started drinking more, perhaps too much for his own good. 

 

He laughed, but his eyes didn’t flicker with amusement. Licking his lips, he glanced over, his elbow propped on the counter, and the glass resting against his temple. “So, what’s the surprise, Sei?”

 

The red head lowered his gaze, lowered his voice and answered with the glass resting against his lips. “Samezuka’s going to have a change of leaders.” Finally, he drank the whiskey. But he did not savor it, did not let it linger, did not leave any in the tumbler. Seijuurou downed the entire thing and hissed as he felt the burn. He swallowed fire, preparing every inch of his body for the dragon’s flames that will come with the war. 

 

Sousuke was not a man who was surprised easily, but he was surprised now. He stared at his mentor, stared at the man he had known for over six years, who saved him and destroyed him, who gave him armor but also kept a knife placed where the metals were separated, exposing part of his skin. The only thought Sousuke had was, he was going to die. Seijuurou would die in the middle of the night, unable to call for help. He prayed that if anything, the red head would die in his dreams, a happy dream. 

 

“Why are you telling me this?” Sousuke asked, his body growing tense, his throat closing in, and his palms getting sweatier the tighter he gripped the glass. 

 

Seijuurou placed the glass down on the counter, the pad of his index finger ran along the rim of the tumbler. “Isn’t it obvious? I want you to join me in this war. You can’t be a neutral party forever. Shit, you even got shot. If anything, you’re not neutral, not in the eyes of those old fucks.”

 

“Give me time to think about it.”

 

“How much time?”

 

Sousuke placed the glass to his lips before answering, “A week. You can hold off on the bloodshed for that long, right?”

 

Seijuurou nodded as he got off the stool, placing a strong and heavy arm on his shoulder. He squeezed it tight. “I want things to change, and I’ll be needing you to help me. Think on it.” He patted the wooden counter as he started walking towards the door with his men falling into step. “Remember though, you’re no longer neutral in their eyes.”

 

The door swung behind them. The chatting continued. The laughter continued. The drinks continued. None of them realized the brewing war underneath their feet. 

 

Sousuke placed his glass down, tired of the taste of whiskey. Rubbing his temples, he fondled in his breast pocket of his suit. Flat. Empty. He forgot he had given the silver cigarette case to the one night stand. Sousuke groaned before he motioned the bartender over. “Hand me a pack of smokes and a lighter,” he mumbled under his breath, feeling sluggish as he lifted himself off the chair. 

 

The carton of cigarettes placed comfortably in his hand again, Sousuke walked outside. His hands shook as he placed the stick to his lips. The lighter wouldn’t catch as he continued to flick it. Sparks of his anxiety. Sparks of his fear. Sparks, and no fire.

 

It might have been the fifth time flicking it that it managed to catch and the small flame danced again. Prepared to light it, Sousuke brought it close to the end of the stick. He was ready to burn his lungs black again, taste ashes again even if all of this would be done in vain, done without anyone to compliment him. 

 

That’s what he thought.

 

“Yamazaki-san?”

 

He would have burned himself if his thumb didn’t release the metal. Sousuke turned his head, tried not to let the surprise cross his face, tried to keep the cigarette in his mouth if not his jaw would fall open, tried not to let his ears rot more than they already have from the poison. 

 

After fourteen weeks and five hours, Sousuke saw Makoto Tachibana again, standing in the cold. He wore  black square framed glasses, showcasing his green eyes, like art pieces behind glass. His mouth was covered by a face mask, so he didn’t know which smile he was greeted with or if he was greeted with a smile at all. He wore a navy cardigan over a white buttoned down shirt and normal jeans and those brown scuffed boots. 

 

“It’s been a while. I haven’t seen you around in the hospital.”

 

“Been busy,” he answered. Short answers. Answers that had no room to pry for more. 

 

“Ah, I see.” His eyes crinkled, his face washed with relief. 

 

Sousuke muttered, “Are you sick?”

 

“Just a small cold,” Makoto said meekly.

 

He glanced over again, looked at the man carefully under the street lamp and noticed his face was redder than normal, red without much provocation. Sousuke took a step forward and extended his hand, touched Makoto’s forehead and felt how hot it was, too hot to be walking out around in the chill with such flimsy clothing. 

 

“Where’s your home, Tachibana?”

 

Startled, Makoto stared at Sousuke, leaving a pause to linger a beat too long. “Uh…do-down the street. Its in an apartment complex a few minutes away.”

 

“The new one across the bakery?”

 

He nodded, coughing until he wheezed. The plastic bag that he gripped onto shook violently. Sousuke sighed as he tucked the cigarette and lighter into his breast pocket again, and rubbed the nape of his neck. 

 

_Ah, fuck_ , he thought as he felt the return of Makoto’s gravitational pull, acting on him and him alone. 

 

He grabbed the bag from Makoto’s hand and began walking in the direction of the apartment. “I’ll walk you home.”

 

“Y-you don’t have to,” Makoto quickly replied when his cough attack was over for the time being. But Sousuke ignored him and continued to walk with his hand in his pocket. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wringing the towel out, Sousuke gently placed it on Makoto’s forehead, burning hot. _Idiot. He should have asked for help for these types of things when he’s sick_. 

 

“Thank you,” the paramedic croaked out, his voice raspy and heavy with the sleepiness from the cough medication. 

 

Sousuke shrugged and mumbled a no problem before he started to get up again. “I’m going home. Make sure your girlfriend gives you your medication in five hours,” he said as he reached the door, his grip tight on the door knob.

 

“Girlfriend?”

 

“Yeah, you have one don’t you?” Sousuke asked, his head lowered, the shadows comforting him, the darkness calling him a friend. 

 

Makoto coughed before he answered, “No, we broke up over a month ago.”

 

What was that sensation that lifted off his shoulders? Why did his legs feel so much more rooted to the wooden floorboards of Makoto’s bedroom? The plain and simple bedroom that smelled like the middle of spring. 

 

He found himself releasing his hold on the door, found himself walking back to the other side of the room and felt him slide down against the wall. _Broke up over a month ago, huh? So who broke it off?_ He wanted to ask, but he let the words drown in his mouth. 

 

Makoto must have noticed his footsteps return to his side and saw him resting with an arm slung over his knee on a leg pulled up close to his chest. “Aren’t you going home?”

 

“I’ll go home when you fall asleep,” Sousuke answered quietly in a monotonous tone. 

 

Makoto tried to tell him that he was fine, that he should leave before it got too late, but his body grew heavier and heavier. His tongue curled, but failed to move. His eyelids felt the weight of the world as it slowly closed. 

 

How long did he sit there against the wall, he did not know. But the room was filled with the gentle sound of Makoto’s soft breathing and maybe if he strained his ears, the sound of cars speeding outside. But at that moment, it was just the two of them, in a dark and quiet room.

 

“You know,” Sousuke began with a soft voice, “An old mentor of mine told me to help him along with some stuff, help him change the world. I don’t know if I should do it, but he says I don’t have any other choice. I’m already a marked man, he says.” The scar of the bullet wound began to throb in his chest. It’s been over three months since it throbbed. “There’s going to be a war soon, a war no one will see but one everyone will feel rumbling. So, before the war starts….”

 

He couldn’t say it, at least not out loud. 

 

So, Sousuke whispered it under his breath “I’ll love you, even if you can’t love me. I’ll love you until it kills me, Makoto.” _If anything_ , Sousuke thought, _if anything_ _the room itself that caught Makoto’s dreams, at least they’ll know._ The words will be written inside the walls, in the floorboards, woven into those warm sheets that protected him at night. And one day, when the war has passed and when he was gone, maybe the room will pass along the message. Tell the paramedic of a man who could no be saved, but caught a glimpse of what it meant to be human. 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In his dreams, it was always winter, winter without snow. Winter had come and gave the ground a blanket of white and stopped right when he entered. In his dreams, he never aged. He was always eight years old. Eight and small. Eight, small and wearing clothes not appropriate for winter. Eight, small, wearing inappropriate clothes for the season and alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was strange trying to formulate Makoto's character through a chapter entirely in his perspective. I admit, it was a little difficult. I hope I did him some justice. There will be a few other chapters later in the series that will feature Makoto again, so I better get a handle on his voice, etc. Anyways, sorry for the usual, got excited while typing this and wanted it up as soon as possible. Please leave comments, reviews, feedback, etc if you can! Tell me what you liked, what you didn't, what you hope to see in the next chapter. Anything you want to say, really! Because I read them all and cherish it so much that it motivates me to write more and faster! Thanks and hope you guys enjoy!

In his dreams, it was always winter, winter without snow. Winter had come and gave the ground a blanket of white and stopped right when he entered. In his dreams, he never aged. He was always eight years old. Eight and small. Eight, small and wearing clothes not appropriate for winter. Eight, small, wearing inappropriate clothes for the season and alone. 

 

Well, not alone. He had a friend, a friend he created out of the clumps of white on the ground, a ground he never saw. Makoto Tachibana in his eight year old body would smile as his hands would shape the snow rabbit, small like him and the only one of his kind in the world. He would never make anymore. If he made more, the rabbit would hop away with the other and he’d really be lonely because he would not stop the rabbit, would not say, “Wait for me! Let me come with! Make me like one of you!” 

 

Because snow rabbits could not get rid of his organs, and bones and all the bits and pieces that made him so solid and turn whatever flesh was left into snow. 

 

And he could never stop them because they would hate him after, and he wouldn’t want to be hated.

 

He was dreaming again. He was eight, again. He was small again and he was alone. His hands deftly shaped the snow rabbit as he always did with a pleasant smile on his lips. Makoto rolled the ball he had in his hand until it grew, collecting the ice, doubling and tripling the size the more he shaped it. Makoto rolled one for the body, rolled another for the head, rolled a smaller one for ears and placed them together. 

 

Carefully, he pressed small holes with his fingers for eyes and drew a upside down triangle for a nose. He was about to draw on a looping smile for the snow creature until he heard a strange rustle and a voice. It called out to him like chimes greeting the summer breeze.

 

_Makoto_ , it whispered in the way only winds could. That long hiss growing louder as it came close to your ear and softer as it left. 

 

He turned around and found himself sitting against the base of a tree, large and old as if it had been there forever and he had never noticed. Makoto slowly got up on his feet, facing the tree, looming over him. The leaves were so green against the sky. 

 

_Have you always been here?_ he wanted to ask, but could not find his voice to do so. Makoto’s voice was a fleeting thing, disappearing when he wanted something. Words have disappeared so often because of it. Guilt had grew in the hearts of people when they realized how much distance they really stood from him, their feet rooted in spring and he stuck forever in a winter that never snowed. 

 

His green eyes trailed up the tree, admired every ridge and rough texture. It flickered from branch to branch in awe. Maybe he should have seen it sooner, the thing that sat along one of the thicker branches, amongst the leaves in a color clearly that did not belong. A man in a black suit with a slim tie whose legs dangled on either side of the branch. His arms were outstretched as he gripped it, straddling it like a horse. 

 

“Who are you?” Makoto asked, his eyes squinting as he tried to recognize the man. His chest squeezed the longer he stared. 

 

From his profile, Makoto saw the man smile. He didn’t need to be closer to know that his smile was beautiful, gentle and rare. The man continued to smile as he swung his legs back and forth, shaking the branch, rustling the leaves. Everything was so alive, so alive in the middle of winter or maybe it was the beginning.

 

“How do you know it’s not the end?” the man chimed with the rich voice etched with notes of familiarity and not. 

 

“The end?” Makoto asked, his brows furrowing.

 

He kept his head ducked, the shade of the tree covered his face. How was there shade when there was no sun? Questions continued to pile before him.

 

The man repeated the question, “How do you know it’s not the end of winter? Why does it have to be the middle or even the beginning?”

 

“Ho-how did you know—”

 

“What you were thinking?”

 

Makoto nodded slowly, because he was afraid words would fail him again. 

 

“This is a dream, isn’t it? Your dream, and I’m in it. I’m a part of this dream. Of course I can hear what you’re thinking. Your thoughts have formed me down to the threads of my suit. You have formed me flesh and bone. I am the rabbit you’ve patted out of snow and ice for the past fourteen years.”

 

Looking down at his feet, he saw the snow rabbit still rolled together beside his feet. His mouth curved with confusion and dissatisfaction with the answer. “That doesn’t really answer my question. Who are you?”

 

The man in the black suit with the slim tie swung one leg over the branch and began rocking back and forth, acting as if he was sitting on a swing, a swing that couldn’t move. “I won’t tell you until you can do the same.”

 

_The same?_ Makoto felt his brows furrow, felt his skin crease with confusion, and sudden desperation. If he didn’t answer, the man in the black suit and the black tie would disappear. Disappear like the snow rabbit. Disappear like everyone else. He had never felt his heart throb so hard and so painfully, he never felt his bones feel so heavy in this eight year old skin. 

 

“Tell me who you are? What is your name?”

 

Makoto opened his mouth, prepared to answer. “My name is—” But his voice failed him again. No, not his voice, his mind. His mind drew a dark and empty blank. _What is my name?_ Other names flickered in his mind, the name of the woman he had helped for three years attending to her garden when her son was away for college—he had missed out on social hangouts because of this during high school; the name of the shopkeeper with the back problems who had asked him to help her clean up her store after it had been robbed and vandalized—he missed his first job interview for that; the name of a friend who collected such a large debt with a loan shark that he pleaded for his help and Makoto had gave him most of his savings—he was still trying to restore that amount. 

 

And then there were others. The name of his first girlfriend who loved each dish spicy—Makoto hated that but adopted. The name of a friend who laughed at things he could never find funny—Makoto laughed too, despite how forced it probably sounded. Names and names began to flash, white letters on the black screen.

 

None of them were his.

 

“Who are you?”

 

“I don’t know,” Makoto’s voice cracked. He buried his face into his hands, body trembling with fear.

 

The leaves rustled again, rustled without any wind like winter without snow. “When you know who you are, you’ll know who I am too. That’s what it means.”

 

He didn’t have to ask what he was talking about because this was a dream, the man was formed of his thoughts down to the nerves in his body. The words lingered, perhaps long enough for the snow. _That’s what it means to love_. 

 

Makoto lifted his face out of his hands, looked up at the large tree bursting with green leaves, looked at the branch where the man in the suit had straddled and instead saw white smoke, smoke that curled and danced as if someone breathed life into it and it moved with joy. 

 

_How beautiful_. Who knew smoke could be so alive. 

 

• • •

Makoto felt a chill along his forehead. No, not a chill, but something cool, refreshing. Ice in the sweltering heat. A touch to someone who forgot what it felt like after walking the world without it for so long after leaving his mother’s bosom. Opening his eyes, an ocean reflected before him, so clear and clean. The color of the water of the Caribbean, a turquoise endless and deep. Realizing he was staring a second too long, Makoto quickly sat up and moved away from the hand that belonged to Sousuke Yamazaki. 

 

What was he still doing here?

 

“I…I thought you left last night,” Makoto flustered, his eyes shifting down to the blanket, avoiding Sousuke’s gaze as he felt the heat reach his ears. If he didn’t look away, he might have noticed the flicker of pain cross the stoic man’s face as his hand fell back to his side. 

 

Sousuke replied calmly as he got up. “I did. I came back this morning. Hope you don’t mind that I used the spare key you left under the mat. I just wanted to make sure your fever had gone down, and I was sure you wouldn’t be in top condition to look after yourself, so I made some porridge for you. It’s in the kitchen.”

 

How did he meet a man so kind? Why did he want more of this kindness? 

 

“You’re not as hot as last night, but you’re obviously not out of the woods, yet.”

 

Makoto smiled weakly as he glanced up at Sousuke again. He didn’t deserve this compassion. Sousuke Yamazaki was a busy man. Surely, just talking now was a sacrifice, a sacrifice Makoto didn’t want him to make. He gripped fistfuls of his blanket, feeling his heart squeeze as tightly as it did in the dream, a dream of a tree and a man and words lost only remembered if he slept again. 

 

“Do you want to eat in her—”

 

“I…I can take care of myself,” Makoto interrupted and wondered why his voice trembled as he said this. He continued to keep his head lowered, avoided the man’s gaze. “You must be busy and helping me home last night was more than enough. Please, go home, Yamazaki-san.”

 

That sounded rude. Sounded inconsiderate. He needed to rephrase himself, needed to say _I’m fine alone. Don’t look back._ Instead of the words he yearned, _Wait for me. Don’t leave me behind._ He needed to give that reassuring smile again. If not, Sousuke would hate him and that was worse than being alone.

 

He flashed that practiced smile, the smile that ached and made his cheeks quiver as he looked over at Sousuke’s direction, though not directly as Sousuke. “Thank you for making the porridge. I’ll be sure to eat it soon. Just go ho—”

 

“Do you think you’re a god?”

 

Makoto’s body tensed and his smile began to waver. Everything wavered. His sight, his voice, his body. Why did it only shake and tremble like this around Sousuke Yamazaki? 

 

“You’re not okay, Tachibana. You’re sick and I’m not leaving you alone until you’re better.” His voice was firm, strong, rooted in the earth and even the bitter cold of winter could not kill the roots. Even in the winter, he would survive. 

 

At least, that’s what he sounded like. 

 

The quivering smile faded into a genuine one, one that crinkled his eyes. “Okay, only if you’re not busy.”

 

“I’m not, not right now at least.” Sousuke answered. Makoto thought he heard relief slip into those words, but maybe he was just imagining it. He was sick after all. A fever could make a person hear things that were never said, like a voice eerily like Sousuke calling his given name, whispering it in his sleep. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And these were the things Makoto Tachibana learned about Sousuke Yamazaki as he lounged around the house, as he cleaned the dishes or opened the window, or watched television in the living room. Sousuke Yamazaki had eyes that drooped like his, ate with his left hand but typically did things like writing or texting with his right hand—an ability he developed to multitask during the job, he said. When he didn’t have work, he often wore black jogging pants or sweatpants, a casual v-neck shirt and one of his favorite sweaters—a bright blue hoodie or a black track jacket. 

 

Doesn’t that sound lazy, he had asked with a crinkle of a smile, soft and rare, almost like the sight of first snow falling. No, Makoto had answered, it sounded comfortable. And Sousuke would look down at his meal and rub the back of his neck. 

 

He hummed classical music, but listened to a variety of genres and artists. He’d show him some whenever he remembers to bring his personal phone when he dropped by again. He always carried his work phone with him however. Makoto could make out the boxy outline resting in the pocket of the black track jacket. 

 

_Again_ , he had said. _He was going to drop by again_. Why did the sound of those words ring so clearly in his ears? Why was he anticipating another visit? _How lonely were you, Makoto Tachibana?_

 

By dinner, his apartment began to feel like a home, warm and lively. _Having someone around sure changed a lot,_ Makoto thought. The food a bit better, the jokes on the variety show a bit funnier, the conversation a bit more fluid. Makoto indulged in things he never got to indulge with others before, things like talking about his family: a brother and sister—Ren and Ran. He talked about his hometown by the sea, his passion for swimming—though he mostly does backstroke. He talked about how he disliked spicy things, how some things weren’t so funny, how he, for as long as he remembered, did not cry, but wanted to.

 

The atmosphere in the room was so warm, he felt drunk and let the words continued to slip, his lips cradled a smile again, a new smile one that treaded the border of fake and real. 

 

“Do you want to cry now?” Sousuke asked, his tone seemingly monotonous. But Makoto strangely heard the man’s concern. Had it always been there before? It sounded so sweet.

 

Makoto found himself nodding, felt tears prick his eyes and his body tense as he tried to hold it back. 

 

“Cry then,” Sousuke replied. “It’s not healthy to hold it all in like that. I’ll be your shoulder.”

 

He continued to fight it, fight the flood, run before the Red Sea collapsed on him. Sousuke noticed the aggravating silence that drifted, noticed the tension that ran along Makoto’s body. “Cry. I won’t look. I promise.” Makoto glanced up, eyes watery. He couldn’t see clearly, but caught the distorted profile, a profile familiar like the man sitting on the tree whose words he could not remember. 

 

When his breathing became too ragged and his eyes felt like they were swelling, Makoto finally indulged himself in the pain of crying. He wasn’t sure why. Was it for all those years he couldn’t? When he smiled instead of yelled, smiled instead of confessed, smiled when he couldn’t refuse? But he felt he was laughing too. Crying tears of joy for lives he had saved, for memories stored like vivid dreams tucked carefully in his mind.

 

He cried for the man sitting across from him who didn’t look his way and made him remember what it was like being in a home, with conversations more lively and variety shows a bit funnier, and the food being a bit better with company. 

 

_How lonely were you, Makoto Tachibana?_

 

Very, it seemed.

 

Of course, maybe this was the fever. 


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crying is a solitary thing. If Sousuke had to depend his life on any reality that would certainly be one of the truths. Even if he continued to watch the tears slip from Makoto Tachibana’s eyes or described the sound of Makoto Tachibana’s suppressed sobs—he also heard a hint of weak trembling laughter laced in there too—or even if he wrote odes and ballads of how tight his chest felt at the spectacle of such a broad backed man be so vulnerable, nothing could tap into Makoto Tachibana’s mind. Nothing could share those tears, share those thoughts, share the sensation of hot saliva that formed in his mouth and gagged him until he couldn’t breathe. 
> 
> Makoto cried alone and Sousuke sat across from him, a quiet presence.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for the delay! College classes has started up again, so I've been pretty busy trying to get out of summer mode. That might explain why this chapter is incredibly short and a little OOC? Hopefully it isn't, but something tells me that it is. I've been facing a writing rut with this chapter which is why I didn't expand the chapter into another day or something like I usually do with the others. Hopefully chapter seven comes out better and maybe even sooner than this one. 
> 
> Leave your thoughts in the comments, please? Reviews, feedbacks, what you're hoping to see next time, whatever floats your boat really. They all help me, really! Anyways, thank you for continuing to support me and following this crazy not really well planned story. Enjoy, guys!

Crying is a solitary thing. If Sousuke had to depend his life on any reality that would certainly be one of the truths. Even if he continued to watch the tears slip from Makoto Tachibana’s eyes or described the sound of Makoto Tachibana’s suppressed sobs—he also heard a hint of weak trembling laughter laced in there too—or even if he wrote odes and ballads of how tight his chest felt at the spectacle of such a broad backed man be so vulnerable, nothing could tap into Makoto Tachibana’s mind. Nothing could share those tears, share those thoughts, share the sensation of hot saliva that formed in his mouth and gagged him until he couldn’t breathe. 

 

Makoto cried alone and Sousuke sat across from him, a quiet presence. So, Sousuke decided to tuck the memory in the back of his mind. Let the moments that tears slipped from Makoto’s eyes be engraved in the calm of the room, and in his own mind—not to be shared with anyone. Because Sousuke loved him, loved him so much that this vulnerability could not be shared with the world outside, especially to you dear reader. Makoto’s tears that had been bottled up for the past decade will drift in the darkness, free from the man’s body, never able to tie him down ever again.

 

But what you can know about the events of that night is this. When the tears had subsided, had dripped down into the floorboards and nestled itself in the cracks where no one could touch it, Sousuke got up from his seat, taking his finished dinner and walked over to Makoto’s side. His large hands ruffled through Makoto’s brunette locks, reassuring and gentle. 

 

“Don’t you feel good, now?” Sousuke asked, sounding cheerful as he cocked his head, catching those green eyes that flickered up. 

 

Makoto’s face grew red, realizing that he had sat across from him crying the whole time. His face was almost as red as his swollen and red rimmed eyes. “That was embarrassing. Have you ever cried like that Yamazaki-san?”

 

His hand stopped ruffling, perhaps he had been running his fingers through the soft hair a minute longer than appropriate anyways. Sousuke’s eyes lowered and turned dark with his head turning away and focusing on the half eaten porridge. “Once, a very long time ago.”

 

“What happened?”

 

Nimbly, he patted Makoto’s head and dropped his hand to pick up the bowl. Habit, his lips curved up in that careless smirk, the same one he gave to the one-night-stand, one he didn’t expect to give to Makoto Tachibana. “It’s not a story I’d tell unless you can get a few drinks in me,” Sousuke lied, trying to avoid the answer, trying not to make the room hear stories not meant for even the darkness that held Makoto’s tears.  

 

“I don’t have any alcohol,” the paramedic sounded disappointed that he wouldn’t get to hear a story. 

 

“You don’t drink?” Sousuke asked as he walked over to the kitchen sink, scraping the leftovers into the trashcan nearby. He wanted to shift the conversation, shift it away from him. 

 

_What a twisted idea of love you have, hiding yourself but demanding to know everything about him._   And he heard himself think back, _Never show all your cards._

 

Makoto coughed a few times before answering, his voice raspy and rough, “If there’s an occasion for it like with co-workers or with friends or when I’m really stressed out, I go down to the convenience store to grab a few beers.”

 

“You don’t seem like the kind of guy who could get stressed,” Sousuke replied casually.

 

He heard a soft chuckle, breathless. “That’s what my old girlfriend said. That’s what everyone usually says.”

 

Keeping his tone the same, Sousuke asked, “Oh yeah? Is that why you guys broke up?” The girlfriend with the tan skin ran through his mind, had been running for the past month with her tumbling locks of hair and her expertise in pressing her slender body, being suggestive without speaking. His grip grew tighter and his scrubbing grew faster and rougher as he waited for Makoto’s reply. The question that haunted him when he found out last night. 

 

“That’s part of it. She said she felt guilty whenever she was with me. She said she wasn’t sure if we were dating or if I was just a very compassionate and helpful friend since we would sometimes go a few weeks without seeing each other and only texting once in a while between that.”

 

 Sousuke turned off the faucet and placed the wet dishes on a rack to dry. “Did you love her?” he asked after a beat of silence had passed between them. Slowly turning his head, Sousuke’s gaze fell on Makoto again who was playing with his hands on the table. His smile was weak, unsteady and unsure as the memories flickered through his mind, he was sure. 

 

Makoto said with a soft, but wavering tone, “I…I don’t know. I don’t know what love feels like so I wouldn’t know.” Lifting his head, Makoto’s green eyes locked with Sousuke’s gaze. “I’m sure you know, Yamazaki-san. What does it feel like?”

 

“What does it feel like?” Sousuke repeated. _What does love feel like? It’s suffocating, mind numbing, desperate. It feels like weights on your feet as you sink to the bottom of the ocean. It feels stupid and illogical, contradictory and bothersome. But it also feels light and weightless, makes everything seem a bit brighter, makes simple things like clockwork feel important._

 

Makoto watched him, keen on knowing the answer. _How could he say all that? Surely, he wouldn’t understand it._ Sousuke bit down on his lips, tilting his head back to stare at the plain ceiling, hoping to find some sort of answer. “It feels…selfish.”

 

“Selfish?”

 

“Yeah, selfish.” Sousuke carefully adjusted to watch Makoto’s reaction, watch his brows furrow and his lips purse. He had stared a his lips a second longer than necessary. It let his mind wander, wander, wander. It travelled so far, Sousuke felt it slip into the bedroom and out the window. “Have you ever felt that in any of your relationships, Tachibana-san?”

 

Sousuke had always known that Makoto Tachibana was prone to blushing, but he had never seen the man’s face flush so quickly, turn so red, and eyes grow so wide. He had never seen him quickly lower his gaze, or shift more nervously in his seat. The sight made him want to laugh, and he did. He laughed heartily at the adorable sight—he never thought he’d use that word to describe another man either—and asked, “What is it?”

 

“I—you’ve probably forgotten about it.”

 

Sousuke leaned against the counter with his arms crossed. He nodded, encouraging for an answer. “I have surprisingly amazing memory.”

 

Makoto lowered his head even more and let his slender fingers run through his hair, nervously. “It was a while ago. Those…the times when you used to come to the hospital. Many of the nurses and even some patients would ask me to introduce them to you. And I…” He laughed, understanding the absurdity of his thought process, but Sousuke found his knuckles white as his fingers dug into his arms, found he had stopped breathing when he realized the story was about him, found his body wanting to move but couldn’t because he needed to hear the end. 

 

“I lied and told them whenever you had time, that you dropped by only for a few minutes and leave after.”

 

“How is that selfish?” Sousuke heard himself ask, dazed. 

 

“If I introduced you to them, it’d take time out of our time together wouldn’t it? You don’t stay long that much anyways and talking to you and being around you makes me feel at ease. I normally don’t get to feel so relaxed or happy,” Makoto admitted, the blush lingering, but his voice steady. 

 

_Hey, isn’t that love?_ Sousuke wanted to ask, but he couldn’t find his voice. It was trapped perhaps in the sink drain. He wanted to say, _Idiot, how is that selfish? How could you remotely find that…._ Even in his thoughts he was at a loss for words. 

 

SIlence this time was noticeable, poignant as it rang in their ears. Makoto glanced up again, nervous he had said something wrong or perhaps something that he should have never shared. The unease made him stand up and linger in his step, hesitant if he should head back to bed or walk to where Sousuke stood, completely stiff. “That’s probably not the selfishness you were talking about, right?”

 

Makoto laughed as he scratched the back of his neck, toying with the ends of his hair that brushed his nape. “Maybe if I find someone else, I’ll see what it means. Love as selfish.”

 

Find someone else? Another woman with a slender body who would know how to hold him? Another woman with long hair that curled and rested on her breast? Another woman who would know what his favorite meals were and how to cook it? Another woman, another woman, another woman. And he’d dream about them again, he’d be sure of that. They’d dance and love each other when he closes his eyes. He’d dream again, not remember but remember the loneliness and remember that the voice that belonged to the sakura tree would whisper gentle words to that woman. 

 

Thoughts consumed him.

 

Thoughts of a woman without a face, but undoubtedly a woman. Wedding bells, children, a life without war, life without deception and lies. A life comfortable, predictable, normal. A life surely that Sousuke could never give, could never even dream of as a man or not. He was just a part of a colony whose death will not be mourned but also whose death was certain and inevitable. 

 

But thoughts were thoughts and words for words. And while he thought, his voice was found again and words tumbled out, words meant to be hidden in the space between his heart and the bones of his ribs, untouched and in the darkness within him. “Why do you need to find someone else? If you want to see what selfishness looks like, why don’t you look at me?” 

 

He took a slow step forward with every word, crossing the distance between the counter and where Makoto stood. Was he paralyzed with fear? Could he sense the shift, feel the suffocating presence that Sousuke always carried? How badly did Makoto Tachibana want to run away now?

 

“I’m as selfish as they can get,” Sousuke said. Before Makoto could question, or say another word or even run away if he wanted to do that, Sousuke firmly wrapped an arm around his waist, feeling how tense Makoto’s body was already. He dipped his head slightly and with his crooked index finger, lifted Makoto’s head up. 

 

“So, how about you go out with me? You’ll learn what it means to be really selfish.” His words brushed against Makoto’s lips, coaxing them to part. _Let me poison you as you have poisoned me. Let me drag you down as you have dragged me._ Even then, all of this was indulgence in his own desires. Who knows if Makoto Tachibana could gain anything except the attention of a desperate and greedy man strung by love. “What do you say, Tachibana?”

 

Those green eyes scanned Sousuke’s face quick, trying to see if there was malice, if he should be frightened. If this was a hallucination from his feverish mind, though the fever had passed long ago. The words that crossed his mind slipped out, “You…you don’t smell like smoke.”

 

“I quit.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I told you, didn't I? I'm selfish, and that was a consequence.” His teal eyes kept in steady contact with Makoto's. The longer he stared, the greener his eyes became, as green as stretches of grass in the spring, green so much more vibrant than those blank eyes who only held the hint of green with the passing of cash. 

 

"What...what consequence?" Now those green eyes trailed down to Sousuke's lips, stared at it a little longer than he probably should have and locked his gaze back again. The tips of his ears turned red, blood burning under the surface. 

 

Sousuke Yamazaki let his head lower, lips barely brushing.  _Not yet._ He needed his answer. An honest answer. He needed the truth that only Makoto Tachibana could give him. "Chasing after spring in the dead middle of a winter storm."

 

The tightness in his chest was the result of such hopes, of following such desires. Months wasted of living but not living, of ticking down time since the last moments they had seen each other. Selfish and foolish, that was what it was. Perhaps, those two qualities were what kept him alive for so long in a world where living was a privilege. The world that operated like a Russian winter. Only corpses could survive. 

 

And Makoto Tachibana with the truth in his name asked what he had never thought before, "Why does it have to be the middle of winter? Why can't it be the end?"

 

The voice of the sakura tree asked why. Sousuke answered, "I don't know." 

 

"I don't know either," Makoto admitted, breathless.

 

Like the brushes of words and softest of touches that they shared, Sousuke pressed his lips to Makoto Tachibana, kissing the lips that smiles bloomed from, kissing the lips that had let heavy sobs and tears escape. Maybe he kissed him to find the truth, truth in words that Makoto Tachibana held on. Hope bubbled within him, almost spilling over. Maybe, he'd find spring in the winter storm through those lips. Maybe he'd survive the Russian winter. 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In an ideal world, the words I’m sorry would never have passed through someone’s lips after a kiss, a kiss trembling, a kiss fragile, a kiss already chipped and on the verge of breaking. In an ideal world, Makoto Tachibana would not have pulled away with eyes wide like those of deer caught in the headlights. He would have never taken an unsteady half-step backwards, away. He would never have placed his hand on Sousuke Yamazaki’s chest as he said it, would not have regretted when he felt the heartbeat that grew wings of a hummingbirds pounding against the taller man’s chest, beating against blood and bone. In an ideal world, Makoto Tachibana would never have seen the turquoise colored waters held within his eyes turn dark and dull, hazy and untouchable. How many things that would had never happened in an ideal world, an ideal world shaped in his hands, shaped with the same softness of the snow rabbit of his dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this one was a bit of a doozy. Now, things are going to start moving quickly. In the scheme of things, this chapter marks the halfway point of Makoto and Sousuke's story. Again, hope none of them were too OOC. Hopefully, you guys enjoy Makoto's perspective. Trying to establish two distinct voices for two relatively similar characters is surprisingly hard. 
> 
> Anyways, leave comments, reviews, feedback or anything you like if you can. Those comments really get me going because I know that people actually still want to read it even though it may or may not be a total hot mess. Enjoy!

In an ideal world, the words _I’m sorry_ would never have passed through someone’s lips after a kiss, a kiss trembling, a kiss fragile, a kiss already chipped and on the verge of breaking. In an ideal world, Makoto Tachibana would not have pulled away with eyes wide like those of deer caught in the headlights. He would have never taken an unsteady half-step backwards, away. He would never have placed his hand on Sousuke Yamazaki’s chest as he said it, would not have regretted when he felt the heartbeat that grew wings of a hummingbirds pounding against the taller man’s chest, beating against blood and bone. In an ideal world, Makoto Tachibana would never have seen the turquoise colored waters held within his eyes turn dark and dull, hazy and untouchable. How many things that would had never happened in an ideal world, an ideal world shaped in his hands, shaped with the same softness of the snow rabbit of his dreams. 

 

For a moment though, before Makoto had sharpened his courage to say those pitiful words, that ideal world lingered between them, lingered in that fragile kiss already chipped. Sure, seeing Sousuke so close was already a surprise. Sure, feeling his breath brush his face, caressing him with words was surprising. Sure, his ears burned hotter than he had ever felt them before. But the gentle lips that pressed against his, hesitant and trembling and nervous, felt warm. Not the burning hot of embarrassment that his ears and surely the rest of his face felt, but the warmth of tea on a cold day, or being wrapped up in a blanket with a storm raging outside. 

 

He found himself raising his hand, found himself wanting to hold Sousuke’s face, pull him in for more. He found his raised hand wanting to brush the ends of his hair at the nape of his neck. Makoto’s fingers itched with the desire to touch Sousuke, feel him, probe until he found an explanation to the mystery of how a man—surprisingly taller and a bit larger than himself—could be so gentle. 

 

But, a moment is a moment. Utopia crumbles when not all things are aligned, when even the peace seemed to be a facade. _Why is he being so kind?_ Makoto asked himself. And utopia crumbled before him once he stepped foot on the island. The people disappeared, the city disappeared, the life disappeared and he was left with a white winter land, alone all with just that question.

 

He closed his eyes as he said it, unable to look at Sousuke’s face contort with disgust—probably for sacrificing his decency. “I’m sorry,” Makoto whispered. “You…we shouldn’t…we can’t do this.”

 

Reality paraded back into his life again, taunting him. It jabbed its fingers into him as Sousuke let go, the spots he held on felt strange, cold, empty. It grew a smile, flashing its brilliant white teeth as Makoto watched as he was faced with Sousuke’s wide back, saw the curves of his shoulder blades underneath his shirt as he grabbed his black track jacket and slipped it on with ease, as if leaving was normal. Leaving was certainly normal for Makoto. He had watched thousands of backs grow smaller and smaller, without the faintest glance back. 

 

Makoto turned his hands into fists at his sides, fortifying himself for the click of the door and the return of the lonely apartment. But the longer his nails dug into his palms, he noticed that the click never came. The footsteps had stopped. Slowly, he lifted his gaze off the floor, trailing up until he caught sight of Sousuke’s feet, up his legs, up to his body—half turned—and finally up to his face. His jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed glaring at Makoto. The anger surprised him, made him gasp softly. 

 

“Is it because you see me as just a friend?” Sousuke asked bitingly, sharp and cold enough to split him in half, clean. 

 

“N-no. That’s not it at all,” Makoto bumbled. No one had turned back. No one had asked for more. No one. No one until Sousuke. 

 

A growl entered his next question, “Then it’s because I’m a man. You can’t see yourself with a man because physically it won’t be the same, is that it?”

 

Sousuke’s mouth shifted to a sneer, filled with disgust. Disgust at him? No, that couldn’t be right. Disgust at himself? The line of reality and the ideal began to blur again. Which side was he treading on now? Confusion seized him, made him angrier than he should have been. Why would he be angry in the first place? 

 

“Ha, and now you find me sick. I’ve been spending my time with a homo this whole time. God, he was watching me with those perverted eyes that whole time, hasn’t he?” Sousuke spoke to himself, forced out a chuckle, finding his self-loathing and deprecation a joke. 

 

Makoto’s voice rumbled in his throat and shouted, “What are you talking about?!” His eyes squeezed shut, and his chest grew unbearably tight, his head started feeling light. “Why would I find you sick because of that? It’s not because you’re a man or because you’re my friend. It’s because you pity me. You’re doing this out of pity. Poor Tachibana, always alone. Poor Tachibana, doesn’t even know what love is. What’s wrong with him? Something must be wrong with him. He can’t even think for himself.” The words spilled, the thoughts that draped the winter in his dreams. “Well, let’s play with him for a bit because I’m lonely too. That’s what you’re thinking. That’s what they all think. First, it’s how kind, my life will be better with him around.” Makoto chuckled himself, soft but angry. “And then, over a few weeks it becomes how boring. Who is this guy again? Is he anything besides kind? Where’s his backbone? And then, there’s the guilt. Maybe I should help him. Maybe he just doesn’t understand…”

 

His voice softened, his eyes  pricked with the urge to cry again. “But that’s too much effort, too much to dig into. And you’ll leave, you’ll leave…” He trailed off because that’s where his thoughts trailed off and he had given up in thinking anymore. 

 

Makoto gave a shaky exhale as his hand reached over to rub his upper arm, trying to calm himself down. What did he just do? What did he just say? What part of him did he just expose? The cold seemed to reach the nerves of his body. 

 

“You don’t know me. And I don’t know you,” Sousuke said barely above a whisper. 

 

“Yeah, we don—” Makoto began.

 

“Shut up for a fucking second and listen to what I’m saying,” Sousuke barked. 

 

Quickly, his lips snapped shut and Makoto’s fingers dug into his arm. His heart thumped heavily in his chest, he felt it throb in his throat. This was the second time Makoto had seen Sousuke lose his usual composure. The sight suddenly made him more human, in the sense that humans are dangerous. Every single one. Sousuke’s gaze was locked onto Makoto’s. The teal waves in his eyes stirred to life, splashing and crashing against the shore as it warned of the storm. 

 

“You don’t know me and I don’t know you,” he began again. “So how can you just assume that I’ll do that to you? How can you group me in with all those fucking assholes of deserters? I told you, didn’t I? I’m a selfish man. I’m going to want you to the point it becomes suffocating. I’m not trying to collect you, Tachibana.”

 

The lines of his furrowed brows began to ease and those eyes that drooped… _why did they look so sad now?_ “I’m not normal. I’m not normal and that’s probably going to kill me one day soon. I might leave you and I might not, but why are you stopping yourself just because you’re scared?”

 

Makoto’s lips parted, ready to answer but could not find one. “I…” Nothing. None of the words dared to answer why he had always stopped himself. None of the words wanted to explain that he had always held out his hand, but could never grab hold of the person that walked in front of him. They were always out of reach.

 

Or did he just not try hard enough?

 

“Isn’t it your fault too then? Why you’re so alone?” 

 

Yes, it was his fault too. It was his fault for trapping all those words in his mouth and look where it got him. Now, his words would always be stuck in the narrow spaces of his teeth, hidden in the ridges along the roof of his mouth. They were there, he could always get them if he tried, but he didn’t.

 

And it was his fault too.

 

“Go out with me, Tachibana.” 

 

He could have said what he had always said when someone asked something like this. He would have gave that smile and said yes, would have imagined how it would end from the very beginning and the void in his chest would continue to grow like a black hole, taking in more and more light and stars. 

 

But Makoto found himself pausing, thinking, not giving that fake smile, not smiling at all. “Can you give me some time?”

 

Sousuke began to turn on the ball of his foot, but looked over his shoulder as he replied, “Okay, I’ll give you a day to think about it. I am a busy man after all.”

 

 

 

• • •

 

Yamazaki Sousuke.

Owner.

Shark House.

Work phone.

Email Address.

 

Makoto held the white business card up above his head as he stared at the elegantly designed embossed red kanji that spelled out Sousuke’s name. Sousuke written with the words “manor” and “mediate.” Manor, like a home, but not quite. A vast building where people lived together, but never interacted. Manor with a hierarchical structure. Was Sousuke the manor, the one that offered people a room to sleep in from the harsh weather when necessary and a nice pathway with a garden view? Or did he live in it, owned it, decided who he wanted to stay with him and who should have the doors closed in their face?

 

Mediate. A middle man. A spectator who could find a compromise. Makoto wanted to laugh. He didn’t seem like the kind of man who would give up his ground. Maybe the mediate in his name was his parents’ play on irony. He wondered what the teal eyed man would say if Makoto told him that. 

 

Flipping the card over in the same hand, Makoto looked at the numbers written, Sousuke’s personal cell phone number, the phone with all the artists he promise he’d share the next time he dropped by. Would he drop by anymore if Makoto says no? Would they still be friends? 

 

If he closed his eyes briefly, he’d hear the smooth warm voice hum classical songs again as he set the dinner table. _What are you humming?_ Makoto had asked. Sousuke smiled wistfully, a smile remembering a good memory, a gentle memory. _It’s Gnossienne number 1_ , Sousuke replied, his lips not releasing the smile so easily. _It’s composed by this French guy, Erik Satie. You’ve heard of him?_ Makoto had shook his head and laughed a bit, embarrassed that he was not so cultured in the arts. And Sousuke would echo with his own breathless laughter as he set the table. _He’s an interesting composer. You know, he’d mark his tempos with stuff like “Don’t leave” or “Don’t be proud.” That’s how he describes the tempos. I’m not sure how that makes sense._ Makoto didn’t tell Sousuke that he could understand what Erik Satie meant. He heard it in the hum of the notes. The piece sounded lonely, trapped in the cycle with every wave of melody. 

 

Opening his eyes, he stared at the number again in Sousuke’s handwriting, elegant with a hint of edge—if it was possible to describe someone’s writing in such a way. _It was very…him_ , Makoto thought. 

 

“When you find your answer, call me,” he said while writing in the back before leaving. 

 

Makoto groaned as he dropped his hand to his side again, his arm bouncing back lightly as it hit the bed sheets. Only one day. One day to figure out if he wanted to walk down this path that Sousuke Yamazaki offered. He sensed it would be different, the man himself was different after all. But being together, dating. Just the thought brought the grown man groaning with embarrassment as he buried his face into the pillow. “You’re so cruel, Yamazaki-san,” he shouted, muffled by the case. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Makoto held the drink carefully in his hands. A cold drink on a cold day. He found himself wandering out of the house and back at the hospital, found himself walking down the porch steps that led to the garden pathway, found himself order coffee and sitting at the third bench, the one near the maple tree with the most leaves—though now it looked just as barren in its branches as the others. He took a slow sip of the drink. 

 

“Ugh.” Makoto coughed and his face contorted as the taste lingered. The drink was so bitter and strong. He wished he had ordered his vanilla latte with two shots of expresso instead—though perhaps expresso while he was sick wasn’t such a good idea or coffee in general for that matter. But Makoto realized he couldn’t think at home and missed the view from the third bench. He turned his head and imagined Sousuke sitting beside him in a well tailored suit, leaning back on the bench and stretching out his legs. More often than not, he’d look up the sky, expecting something. Rain or snow perhaps, both were becoming more likely the colder it got. 

 

Since when did Sousuke become such a fixture in his life? The emptiness beside him felt odd. Makoto thought he would have gotten used to it by now after going over a month or so without seeing him. 

 

_You said I made you sick._ Makoto spoke up hesitantly, softly. His thumbs twirled around each other as he waited. The Sousuke of his imagination struck a match and brought it to the end of the cigarette, watching the thin paper burn before putting out the small flame. 

 

_Because you were lying to me_ , Sousuke answered. _Liars make me sick._

 

_You said my smile was ugly._

 

He cocked his head as he glanced over at Makoto. He caught the small roll of his eyes as his lips moved into a casual smirk. Resting in between his index and middle finger, Sousuke tapped the end of the cigarette, dropping the ash onto the floor. _Was I supposed to call a fake smile like that beautiful? You wanted a compliment on how well you can lie to someone?_

 

Makoto’s eyes grew wide, surprised how quickly Sousuke caught on. Of course, this was all in his head anyways. This Sousuke knew every inch of his mind, every thought that had crossed before him, knew him better than Makoto knew himself. 

 

_Why do you care anyways,_ Sousuke asked as he took another drag of the cigarette. _What does it matter if I say your fake smile is ugly or not? Who am I to you?_

 

Makoto’s grip on the iced coffee grew tighter. The drink splashing inside. _You’re…you’re my friend._

 

Sousuke snorted once, finding the answer amusing. _Friend, huh? You lie to all your friends?_

 

_No._

 

_You have any friends?_

 

_Of course I do. I have a lot of friends who…who care about me and support me and like me._

 

_If you got those friends, what’s the point in keeping me around? I’m not so important._ Sousuke turned his head again, locked eyes with Makoto as he raised a brow with ease, _Right, Makoto?_

 

With parted lips, Sousuke blew a perfect O of smoke in his face. Makoto lifted his hand to wave it away and with a blink, he was gone. The seat empty again. And the black void grew. 

 

Sousuke had quit smoking, Makoto rembered him admitting. He had anticipated the familiar scent of nicotine on him, but instead caught a strong musky scent mixed in with sage. It reminded him of a vast spread of earth, and thick forests. It reminded him of hints of blue skies that appeared between the spaces of the large trees and quiet creaks that snaked their way around. He smelled like nature, like a warm home forgotten, like roots that called him. 

 

Maybe giving up cigarettes was for the best.

 

Makoto lowered his eyes down to the cup that he held with the brownish black drink. He took another sip, this time the taste wasn’t as bad as he thought. He almost enjoyed the bitter aftertaste left on his tongue. 

 

When he was tired of the view, Makoto decided to head back to his apartment again. He had realized the change of space and scenery would not automatically help him make a decision. Sousuke Yamazaki had touched every place that he had found tranquility in. He had left his scent of musk and sage and hints of tobacco in the winding pathway, in the white walls of his room, in the dark spaces of his mind. If he had to make a decision, he’d have to make it clouded and completely immersed in Sousuke’s presence. 

 

As he walked down the crowded hospital corridors, his ears pricked when he heard shouting, a rush of nurses slipping into a room, four doors down to where he was. Room 298. Makoto wondered who was in there. Curious, he picked up his own pace too, catch a glimpse of the patient before the nurses decided to close the door. It was a brief glimpse, but he caught a sight of the face. A week ago, before he got sick, there was a dispatch call for an assault and gunshot victim. Male, late 20s. Broken ribcage, swollen face. Three bullet wounds, two clean exits in both arms and the third bullet lodged in his stomach, missing the major organs surprisingly. 

 

He remembered as the sirens pierce the night air, as his hands deftly tried to stitch and put pressure on the wounds, he asked the man, “What’s your name?”

 

The man stared at Makoto, stared with heavy eyelids, ready to fall into that seductive eternal slumber. His lips parted and mouthed a word, repeated it until his voice came through. “Samezuka. Same…zuka.”

 

“Samezuka?” Makoto’s brows furrowed. “Is that your name?”

 

The man shook his head, lazy and slow from side to side. 

 

“Who is that? Is that your brother? Your friend?”

 

“Samezuka…isn’t that the name of that huge yakuza group?” Daiki, his partner, asked over his shoulder. “I’ve heard they have a pretty wide net here in Tokyo.”

 

“Are they?” he asked as an after thought. “I haven’t heard of them.”

 

Daiki chuckled. “The ones you don’t hear of. Aren’t they the most dangerous kind?”

 

Makoto’s eyes flickered back to the man on the gurney, breathing shallow and ragged. Was he part of that yakuza group or were they the ones that attacked him? Whatever the reason, he had to save him, a gang member or not. No one should have to die. Second chances existed, don’t they? 

 

With a reassuring grip on the man’s shoulder, Makoto whispered, “I’m not letting you die. Prove to that Samezuka group that you’re strong. You have me.”

 

Makoto watched now with eyes wide with horror and heart scratching at the cage of his ribs, the man he promised he wouldn’t let die, begin to slip into death’s clutches. His body was seizing, shaking and convulsing on the bed, twisting the thin sheets. Hands held him down, trying to keep him as still as possible so that the sedative shots could be properly managed. But it was a worthless attempt. His blood pressure began dropping, slow and steady then quick. His heart rate quickened and then slowed dangerously. 

 

Death sat on the edge of the bed, with his legs crossed. He picked his teeth as he waited. Clockwork.

 

The man’s name was Ieyasu Takagawa. He was 29 years old. His next of kin, his older sister, lived in Kyoto. They called to inform her of the news. She answered the phone call that she didn’t have a good for nothing brother like him. Burn the corpse if they had to, she wasn’t going to come pick up the body. Makoto stood at the door frame, watched the white sheet slip over the body’s head. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t. Not here. Not alone like this.

 

“Tachibana-san?” The rough voice sounded familiar. 

 

Makoto caught sight of the black undercut, the hazel eyes that seemed golden in the light, any light. Uozumi Takuya. Uozumi who worked under Sousuke. Makoto felt each path suddenly leading towards the man, second by second. 

 

Uozumi stood by the window that looked into the late Ieyasu Takagawa’s room. How long had he been standing there? Did he watch the spectacle too? Makoto had been shocked stiff that he did not see anything but the paling, swollen face. 

 

“Takuya-san, it’s been a long time.” His heart thumped once, reminding him. Uozumi didn’t seem like a man who would move anywhere unless Sousuke was around. “Is…is Yamazaki-san here?” The day was not over yet. He didn’t have his answer yet. He couldn’t see him. Not yet. When would he have the answer? He didn’t know, but not now.

 

The hazel eyes shifted away from Makoto as he answered, “No, he’s not here. I was just visiting someone.”

 

_Was he lying?_ Makoto found himself asking. But before he could ask anymore, Uozumi began to speak again.

 

“Can I ask you something, Tachibana-san?” His voice was soft and gentle, different from the first time they had met,crammed in the small ambulance with Sousuke between them. He had been tugging at his hair and swearing like a sailor. The memory entertained him briefly seeing the change now.

 

“Of course.”

 

“Does the boss seem…” Uozumi paused, finding the words as he brushed his fingers along the stubble of his shaved hair. “Does he seem more alive to you?”

 

“Alive?”

 

“Happier, maybe? Angrier? More emotional?”

 

Angry, perhaps. Happier? He couldn’t say if he was happier. He had never seen him before without that gentle smile, soft and a bit reserved but genuine. 

 

“Maybe you haven’t noticed it, but I think you’ve changed him a bit, Tachibana-san. He speaks more now, and the other day, I think I saw him smile.” Uozumi laughed under his breath as he stuck his hands in his tailored pants pockets. He rocked on the heels of his shined and polished shoes. “It was a weird sight, the boss smiling.”

 

Sousuke never smiled, had never smiled until now. But all he had seen him do was smile, with the brief cracks of lost composure. Makoto looked down at the shining floors, freshly mopped and waxed. He wanted to laugh, but couldn’t. His lips wanted to stretch into a smile, but he stopped himself. _Why are you telling me this? Why now?_

 

“He might not say it, but I think he likes you quite a lot, Tachibana-san. He won’t say it, but he does.”

 

What Uozumi suggested was not perhaps hinting at a romantic relationship, an intimate one. Would he still say the same thing if he knew that his boss who he thought could not speak a word for his life had trembled as he kissed him, asked him to go out with him, spun a spider’s web in every inch of Makoto’s life? 

 

“Stick around him, if you can. He’s not the easiest person to be around, but the boss, he’s a good guy.”

 

Makoto’s lips curved into a small smile. _Sousuke had always been a good guy. How could he be anything other than that?_

 

 

 

 

 

 

That was how he found himself in front of apartment 3B, a fifteen minute train ride from the hospital, probably faster if he had taken up Uozumi’s offer to drive him there. Makoto swallowed the lump at the back of his throat. Should he knock? He should have called first. What if he wasn’t home and was somewhere else? Ah, he really didn’t think this through. But Makoto could not leave now. If he left, he might not come back again. 

 

Taking in a deep breath, Makoto rapped lightly on the steel door. There was a long silence until he heard the soft pads of footsteps and Sousuke’s voice repeating, “Coming.”  Makoto’s heart thumped with each footstep he heard. Sometimes it even added a few more beats for safe measure. His palms were getting sweaty now as he waited, waited, waited. Maybe he should leave after all. Maybe this was too sudden. Maybe he should have just called. Before he could make up his mind, the door swung open quickly making Makoto stumbled back a bit, trying to avoid being hit in the face. 

 

Sousuke was equally surprised by the sound of his voice, “Tachibana? What are you doing here?”

 

It took him a bit long to answer as his eyes trailed up. Sousuke in his tight jogging pants, shirtless—revealing his left arm from his shoulder down to his mid-forearm inked black as night. It extended from his shoulders towards his clavicle, curving down to his pectoral. The curve was outlined with small and thin lines, cut out and bordered with another thicker black. The tattoo looked like armor strapped to him. But with all that black ink taking up most of his arm, Makoto would have fooled himself into thinking his body was rotting. Following up, he noticed Sousuke’s eyes framed with black glasses of his own. The sight of it resting on the man’s face seemed strange, but he pulled it off quite well. 

 

“I…” Makoto’s face grew redder and redder the more he fidgeted and figured out what to say, another thing he should have prepared and probably would have been better if he did all of this over the phone. 

 

“Yes!” he finally mustered with his head ducked low, avoiding eye contact. “I-I’ll go out with you. If…if you’re okay with that.”

 

Sousuke didn’t answer. He didn’t say anything for a while. “You’re still sick, right? Come inside, it’s warmer.”

 

Makoto lifted his head, watched as Sousuke stepped aside, giving him room to walk in. _What?_ He wanted to ask. 

 

“What?”

 

“Hurry up and get inside. You’re going to run another fever again if you stay out there.” Sousuke didn’t smile, didn’t seem the least bit happy with Makoto’s answer and it confused him and disappointed him. What was he expecting? A strong and solid embrace, a smile so wide it’d outshine the sun? Hand holding and their first date? This was different. Sousuke had already said he was different from the rest of them. 

 

Exhaling loudly, Sousuke grabbed the shocked stiff Makoto and dragged him inside, closing the door behind him with a loud clang. “Geez, I would probably catch a cold if you stayed out there any longer.”

 

Makoto’s eyes still focused on the ground, too focused to realize how close they were standing, almost as close as last night. 

 

“Hey,” Sousuke whispered, brought his hand up to Makoto’s cheek and stroked small circles with his thumb. “You’re not already regretting this, are you?”

 

How could a touch be so electrifying and gentle? How did it burn him, but cool him down at the same time? Sousuke Yamazaki lived and breathed as a paradox, like an old tree, thriving and blooming in the winter, always there but unnoticed. His eyes drifted down Sousuke’s face, to his chest where the gun shot wound was. The scar was still there, a darker and tender dusty red compared to the rest of his smooth skin. Makoto brought his fingers up to touch it. The flesh sunk in, sinking closer to his heart. A flower had burned itself upon his skin, and suddenly Makoto felt his eyes burn with the desire to cry.

 

Sousuke caught the teary glint. His brows furrowed. “Tachibana?”

 

Makoto laughed weakly, pressed his palm over the scar. Sousuke could have been seizing like Ieyasu Takagawa. His blood pressure could have dropped, his heart could have slowed dangerously until it didn’t beat at all. All of that could have happened. And Makoto would have been standing at the door, or sitting in the ambulance truck, looking at the window, only adding another name and age to the list of patients he had lost. Where would he be now if that had all unfolded? “I’m just glad you’re alive.”

 

Warm hands cupped Makoto’s face, held it as gingerly as it could. His soft lips curved into a gentle grin. “Hey, what’s with that? Being so cute all of a sudden?”

 

Makoto blushed sheepishly. He would have turned his head away, let the blush hide itself, but Sousuke’s hold on his head was firm. So, he kept his gaze on those teal waters, calmly reflecting him. Sousuke dipped his head again, leaned in and pressed his lips to Makoto’s. What a fragile kiss, so easily broken. But as Makoto’s hands and arms moved to wrap themselves around Sousuke’s toned body, desperation eased in. He kissed with more intensity each second, leaving Makoto breathless and trembling but wanting more, wanting to feel the life that beat against his own. 

 

Sousuke’s tongue licked Makoto’s lips, coaxing them to part for him. And when he did to take in a shallow breath, it slipped in, exploring his mouth with the quick and ease as his hands running up and down his sides, firmly feeling each muscle hidden underneath Makoto’s black thermal. He was making sure Makoto was really there too, feeling for life, feeling for solid flesh and bone. 

 

Giving Makoto time to breathe, Sousuke began to kiss along his jaw, reaching his ears, burning. He ran his tongue along the edge, nipping at the top, eliciting a flinch and a sound from Makoto. He laughed, low and seductive. 

 

“Being cute, it’s dangerous, you know. It makes me want to do things to you.”

 

Makoto didn’t know, but found the desire to want spark with every second that passed. It burned and didn’t stop. It burned and left a beautiful wisp of smoke in him. His forehead rested on Sousuke’s shoulder as he took in his trembling breaths. 

 

Sousuke continued to whisper in his ear, “I’ll show you what it means to be selfish.”

 

_That was a lie, wasn’t it?_ Makoto thought. 

_Aren’t you just going to show me what it means not to be lonely anymore?_

_Aren’t you just going to close up the black hole in your heart with mine?_

 

For the first time, Makoto nodded, nodded and didn’t let go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you wondering, this is what Sousuke's tattoo looks like: http://media-cache-ec0.pinimg.com/736x/2e/e8/e4/2ee8e44d7c3b82ee32fd3437b0f86310.jpg
> 
> I'm basically just shoving in all the things I find attractive onto Sousuke. Yakuza, check. Suit, check. Now mid-sleeve tattoo, check. If this fic seemed a bit self-indulgent at times, that's because it is.
> 
> And if those wanted to listen to the song that Sousuke hums, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLFVGwGQcB0


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If there had to be a word that described Sousuke Yamazaki, it would be backwards. Backwards pumped and mingled in his bone marrow. Backwards moved him and made him stay. He should have warned Makoto Tachibana of this physical condition, but perhaps the man would have already known that. After all, in the moments of dying, Sousuke found life. In coating the insides of his lung black, Sousuke was able to breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....I'm sure this is the moment you guys have all been waiting for. Unfortunately (for future plot reasons), you won't get the whole experience yet. Also, this is the first time I've written sex scenes like this--like descriptive and such--so forgive my embarrassing attempt. I have someone vouch for me when I say I was as red as Makoto Tachibana showing off his back muscles as I wrote this. You can certainly expect more, but I'm not sure how great it will be. 
> 
> With all that said, I hope you enjoy this chapter aka the beginning of the "fluff" stages of soumako. Though knowing me, this won't be as fluff as the term actually means. So, sorry if you wanted a break from the angst. Anyways, comment, review, leave some feedback because they help and I love them lots!
> 
> P.S. Something exciting is happening as a companion piece to this fic. I'll give you all a heads up when the time comes! (IT'S SO EXCITING I'M CRYING JUST LOOKING AT IT.)

If there had to be a word that described Sousuke Yamazaki, it would be backwards. Backwards pumped and mingled in his bone marrow. Backwards moved him and made him stay. He should have warned Makoto Tachibana of this physical condition, but perhaps the man would have already known that. After all, in the moments of dying, Sousuke found life. In coating the insides of his lung black, Sousuke was able to breathe. He slept while the sun was out and woke when the moon glistened or not, so long as the rest of the world was pitch black, he was awake. Sousuke entered the Samezuka group with the intention to live, to survive, but knew his grave was already being dug, all because he joined. And maybe Makoto Tachibana was meant to lead him forward, stop the reversal sewed into his motions and teach him how to rise with the sun and sleep with the moon, and breathe clean air than burnt one to live. It had all started out like that, with the gradual friendship, the built of routine, the question of whether Makoto would want to date him, be with him. But legs accustomed to walking back don’t understand that their motions are wrong. That kissing like this was wrong, that grabbing fistfuls of his hair was wrong, that stumbling and leading him to the bed was wrong.

 

_Don’t you want this to last?_ The voice whispered, perhaps chiding him, perhaps tired of the habits, perhaps seeing the end as everything was just beginning.

 

But his response was a growl, a growl echoed and rumbling as he kissed down to Makoto’s neck, biting, sucking and licking the mark. His response was not wanting to let go even though he had to lead them to the bedroom. His response was the same. Carnal hunger. A hunger he thought he had freed himself from with all those one night stands with those dull eyes and trained bodies. A hunger he had thought he threw away, threw away the same night he gave away that silver cigarette case. But the hunger lingered, the habit lingered, and he was going to destroy a tree that had flowers blooming in the middle of winter because he could finally touch it. And what a human hand can touch, a human hand will destroy.

 

Sousuke rested his forehead against Makoto’s, one hand holding on the tender curve of his waist, the other besides the soft brown locks of hair pressed flat on the wall behind him. _I’m sorry_ , he wanted to say. _I’m sorry for doing this all backwards._ His lips never said those things, never could at that moment. Sousuke’s lips just quivered, trembled, wanting to inhale all the life that Makoto could give him. And when he could muster the strength, he’d dip his head and place his mouth over Makoto’s again, barely giving him the chance to take a full breath. Because if he did, Makoto might say something, something that made the voice whisper from the start.

 

_He might say, stop._

_He might say, you’re dying._

_He might say, you’re dragging me down._

_He might say, I want to live._

 

And if he said all that, if he said those words, Sousuke Yamazaki wouldn’t know what he would do. He could kill him, had the power to, power he used and abused and bathed in. He could lie to him with that sharp tongue, sharp enough that others were steeling their own knives too. He could let him go. He could release Makoto’s body from his grips again, throw away another cigarette case, have sex with pale and dead eyes and return to a dream where winter never ended because winter never did. 

 

He could do all that. 

He would do all that if he let Makoto breathe. 

So, he didn’t. 

 

 

In a tangle of arms and legs and mouth biting and sucking until teeth clicked against each other, Makoto’s legs had hit the edge of Sousuke’s bed and they sunk into the mattress with ease. Both hands placed besides Makoto’s head, he looked down, looked at the tree he was going to burn with his lungs of ash and nicotine. Makoto’s hair was now disheveled, likes leaves shaken during a rough wind that came as sudden as it left. His lips pinker and a tad more swollen looked like sakura blossoms, too pink and soft, too fragile, too saturated with color for this man who only dreamed in the season of winter and for the room that looked more like a prison, empty of life, white, and gray and completely stripped.

 

That is who he had become, isn’t it? 

A lifeless man?

A hollow man?

Ha, maybe death couldn’t touch him now.

If he was no longer alive, no longer a man, what life was there to take?

 

But those green eyes that reflected him in their vibrant hue, they had life. The flush of red that rose from that thick neck up to those high cheeks and those delicate ears, that had life. And the hands that reached up and stroked the hollow man’s face, it had life in every nerve that moved it. And if there was another truth that he had burned into his heart as a reminder, it was that nature operated on equivalent exchange. If Death and his friendly hand could not reach his soul and take Sousuke’s life, he’d take the closest thing to him that pumped blood and breathed air and it was the life that he hovered over, the life of the tree whose chest rose and fell, trying to catch its breath but yearning to be swept away again in the turbulence of lips and teeth and tongue. 

 

So he whispered, _I’m sorry_ , in the back of his mind as he leaned down again and kissed deep and long, deep and tender, deep and afraid. 

 

_I’m sorry._

_I’m sorry._

_I’m sorry._

 

_Say it three times to be forgiven. More if you mean it._ Someone had told him that once. And now he repeated those words over and over.

 

Maybe death would forgive him. Maybe Makoto would forgive him. Maybe the past that shaped him into this miserable and poisonous man would forgive him. A man who has walked backwards cannot move forwards. His legs would have to break whole and clean before he could change a habit like that.

 

 

 

 

 

 

_What a smooth body_ , Sousuke thought as he slid his hands under Makoto’s thermal and began tugging the hem up. Dipping his head, he began to kiss every inch of skin that was beginning to be exposed. He kissed each rise and contour of Makoto’s abs, grazed his teeth along the skin, bit and sucked leaving a trail of small flowers behind, flowers made of broken blood vessels behind the wake of Sousuke’s affection.

 

Each kiss elicited a hiss behind clenched teeth. Each bite encouraged Makoto to wrap his fingers in Sousuke’s hair, gripping it tighter. Each brush of his tongue along the smooth skin coaxed him to lift his body more, pressing it firmly against Sousuke’s lips again. With one arm, he wrapped it around that tone waist, digging his fingers into his skin and with his free arm, he began pulling Makoto’s shirt up and over his head, desperate to explore his body. Maybe he’d find freckles he wouldn’t have caught unless he was a breath away from his body. Maybe he’d find scars or burns or even bruises. Maybe he’d find a story in the veins under Makoto’s skin. 

 

If only he could read the branches and twists of veins and capillaries the same way fortune tellers read a person’s palm, life would so much easier. Sousuke laughed in his mind, and laughed breathless against Makoto’s chest too. The sensation and the sound must have surprised him because he quickly flinched, almost shifting out of his hold. 

 

“I-I’m sorry,” Makoto quickly said, his hands clasping over his face hiding the flustered face. 

 

“What are you apologizing for?” Sousuke asked, laughter lacing his words. He reached up to brush away Makoto’s arms. Those green eyes were nowhere to be seen as Makoto squeezed his eyes shut, too embarrassed to look. 

 

“I’m normally not like this,” he answered, his face getting redder. 

 

Sousuke wanted to laugh again, but laughing might make him bolt out the door so he held it back. Lifting himself up, he brought himself back so that they were face to face again. 

 

“Isn’t that a good thing?” he whispered, pushing some locks of hair out of Makoto’s face. 

 

The question made Makoto slowly open his eyes. “…A good thing?” He repeated.

 

“The normal you,” Sousuke began as he kissed his lips again, “Would ask me what I wanted.” His lips began to trail down to the side of his mouth. “You would do what you thought I wanted.” Sousuke kissed down his jaw and Makoto by instinct arched his neck. Sousuke wondered if he was closing his eyes again, closing them for a sensation that was not embarrassment. “But you’re moving under my touch.” Down the kisses went, down the smooth length of his throat. “Your body is being greedy.” He nipped at the tender space where Makoto’s clavicle rose. “It’s been neglected and wants to be indulged again.”

 

Sousuke pictured the woman, pictured her slender hands placed on the same smooth chest he kissed and admired now. He imagined her straddling him, coaxing moans to escape those soft pink lips, lips so soft he could have mistaken them for petals brushing against his. If Sousuke did not bite down and tug on them earlier, he could have been fooled. He could have been kissing a flower and would not have known any better. 

 

He brought his lips down further, flicked his tongue over nipple, still tender. He brought his mouth to it, sucked it, tugged lightly with his teeth. Looking up between his lashes, he caught Makoto’s mouth part as his breath hitched, a gasp quick and quiet. While Sousuke lured out the dark cravings hidden deep within the man’s mind, he felt lust pluck his strings too, plucked and played each fiber of his body until he wasn’t sure if his body was his own anymore. 

 

“You’re really sensitive,” Sousuke said coarsely as his hand worked the other nipple between his fingers, made them as pink and hard. His ears craved that hitch again, that desperate moan rumbling from the back of Makoto’s throat. 

 

“Don-don’t say that. It-it’s embarrassing,” Makoto hissed towards the end when Sousuke brought his teeth to the pink nib. He was sure the brunette would have blushed if he was not flooded with sensation other than pleasure. 

 

Sousuke chuckled as he kissed his way up again and rested his lips in the crook of his neck, a little under his ear. “If you want me to shut up so you can enjoy yourself, then tell me to shut up.” 

 

Slowly, he snaked his hand until it rested on the inside of his thigh near the crotch. Over the dark wash jeans, Sousuke pressed his palm to it, feeling Makoto jerk under him. He laughed again, breath brushing his ear. “Tell me to shut up, Tachibana.”

 

If he tried to say it, say anything, Makoto’s voice never came through. All Sousuke heard was a whimper, sometimes a moan mingling in his breathing that began to verge into panting. His hands slipped down to Sousuke’s back and his nails dug in to his skin, making him hiss as well. He hoped in the morning it would leave a mark, remind him that the moment they were sharing right now was real, not a dream. After all, there wasn’t any snow, none that he could see, none that burned his body that throbbed with every heart beat. 

 

“Tell me what you want me to do,” he whispered, nipping at Makoto’s earlobe while he continued to knead his crotch in his hands, feeling him respond to the pressure, growing hard under his touch. 

 

Sousuke hoped desperation didn’t mingle in his tone. He hoped Makoto didn’t hear the words that hid themselves underneath what he said. He hoped he didn’t hear those words of apology. He’d give him pleasure now to makeup for the pain, love him passionately now before his hand was wrapped around his throat, choking the life out of him. 

 

_Tell me what you want me to do before I destroy you._

_Tell me how you want to feel before you can’t anymore._

_Tell me you love me before you start to hate me._

 

“Help me,” Makoto pleaded as his fingers left its hold on his back to shift Sousuke’s hand to the button of his jeans. 

 

“Okay.” Sousuke obeyed and undid the jeans, freeing both hands now to hook his fingers through the belt loops and tugging them off those long legs. Slowly, he snaked his hands into his boxer briefs, admired where the band rested on his hip bones, dangerously framing the pelvic dip of his body, encouraging him to pull the underwear lower.

 

And what kind of gentleman would he be if he didn’t oblige?

 

Sitting up now, Sousuke pulled the boxers down and smiled at the sight, smiled at Makoto’s relapse in embarrassment when his green eyes caught with his own. 

 

“I’ve never…I’ve never done this before,” he answered roughly, still out of breath. “I don’t know—”

 

Sousuke brought a hand to the side of Makoto’s face, momentarily surprised when the soft cheek leaned into it, accepting the warmth in the touch. “You don’t need to know anything. All I need you to do for me is to feel good.”

 

Makoto nodded with a shaky exhale. _He was cute when he’s nervous_ , Sousuke found himself thinking. When did he think that, he couldn’t even say. The memories blurred and faded together with coffee and smoking and trees with leaves that hung on. Somewhere in there, somewhere in one of those coffee cups, he had fallen in love and found the paramedic who saved his life, just a notch better than all the rest. 

 

Wrapping his hand around his cock, already erect, Sousuke began to stroke the length, slowly building up his pace. Makoto writhed under him, arched his body and curled his fingers into the sheets. With calm eyes, he watched as every single shell and skin that Makoto had formed around him, crumble and break. All that was left was a man vulnerable by pleasure, vulnerable by the heat and passion that stretched itself across the room, vulnerable wholly and completely under Sousuke. He was glad that he could see this, Makoto raw and sensual. But the voice ticked at the back of his mind, questioned how this was any different from the past and it made Sousuke jerk him off faster.

 

It wasn’t long before Makoto cried that he was going to come, and did. It wasn’t long before Sousuke teased that he must have been incredibly frustrated to finish so quickly. It wasn’t long before the redness spread itself like ink to a page across Makoto’s face, ears and further. 

 

“Probably haven’t done that since your last girlfriend, right? That’s why you came so quick,” Sousuke smirked, though there was a roughness to the curve of his lips. He lowered his eyes as he watched Makoto feel around for his boxer briefs Sousuke had thrown and landed somewhere in the mess of sheets. 

 

Makoto answered as he found the piece and began slipping his legs through them again, “We never did anything besides kiss. It just never reached that point in any of my relationships.” He laughed embarrassed, as if letting Sousuke in on the knowledge of his virginity would tack on more humiliation above his head. 

 

Sousuke’s eyes grew wide as he heard. What washed over him could be described as a flooded mixture of feelings: relief of a nightmare that replayed itself over and over whenever he closed his eyes, embarrassment for starting a relationship out so backwards, and euphoria for that raw and exposed man who trusted him with his body and who craved his touch. He did not rot with his love, was not poisoned by his kisses, but shed his skin off and let Sousuke in. 

 

Feeling his fingers tremble, he quickly pulled Makoto in by the back of his head and kissed him firmly again. Sousuke kissed him because maybe he’d taste the feelings that rushed through him too, kissed him because maybe he could burn this moment into his soul and carry it to the afterlife. Sousuke kissed Makoto Tachibana because he had never kissed any of his one night stands after sex and if he wanted to break his legs and change a habit, perhaps this would be the first step. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He had never loved the darkness of his room, dark except for that slit of moonlight that dared to sneak past the separated curtains. Sousuke woke to the sound of another breath, inhaling and exhaling softy beside him. The small breaths brushing his face. Fear seized him in that dark room, that prison room, that room that never knew life because neither did he. Sousuke held his breath, let the breeze that managed to slip in through the crack of the screen door let the light extend until it illuminated the face beside him, the face he knew, the face not of a stranger he met that very day. 

 

And the room saw Sousuke Yamazaki smile a secret smile, relieved and pleased that Makoto Tachibana was there, was real, was not a stranger or a dream. He brushed a few strands of hair away from Makoto’s face for safe measure, feeling the warm skin and soft hair under his fingertips. 

 

He could enjoy a life like this, simple and lazy and shared with just the paramedic by his side, sniffling from the lingering cold that had slipped their minds in the wake of passion and lust. But Sousuke had mused about a lot of things his life could have been, mused and tucked it away in the dark crevices of his mind before reality tore it to shreds.

 

Perhaps the phone call was the first step, tearing the corner of the page of this dream too. The sound made Makoto shift in the bed, turning away from Sousuke. Quickly he grabbed a shirt from the floor and his phone in the other as he stepped out to the balcony, making sure to close it behind him. 

 

“What is it?” Sosuke asked as he pulled his shirt on. 

 

“Uozumi said he cut the cord just like you asked,” Minami answered brightly and cheerfully. If death could take on any character as frightening, it would take on Minami Kazeru, smiling over corpses as if they were the most entertaining and beautiful things in the world. 

 

“Did the guy say anything before that?”

 

“Yup, that Ieyasu said it was Nishio of the fourth that hired the guy, but doesn’t know who sent out the orders. Said it was probably higher up. Maybe Mikoshiba is telling the truth with the old heads wanting to shoot you down, boss.” Minami replied casually. Sousuke already knew he was sitting in his chair with his legs propped up, about to knock over a cup of coffee all over the desk sooner or later after the phone call. 

 

Sousuke bit down on his lip until it drew blood. He never doubted Seijuurou, but he had to check his facts after all. How could Sousuke twist the truth into a pretty bow that looked nothing of it, if he didn’t even know what he was twisting, how much he should twist it, and how much the material would give when he tugged it tight? 

 

Sighing, he cleared his throat, cleared his mind. He’d turn off his phone for the next few days and live in a dream tailored for him, a dream that was never meant to exist in the first place. “Anything else?”

 

Minami must have picked up on the strange urgency in his tone, to toss the winter world behind a closet that was meant to hide such dark and cold things. His tone quirked with curiosity, “Nope, nothing else sir. Have a good night, sir. I hope your late night friend has one too.”

 

The devil in poor disguise laughed as he hung up before Sousuke could bark back. 

 

Feeling the weight of the night, the cold and the quiet and the emptiness reach and press him down, Sousuke Yamazaki turned back to the room, the warm room, the room that protected the sleeping man in its bundle of white sheets. Closing the door behind him, he heard a shift in movement and noticed Makoto sitting up in the bed. 

 

Sousuke tossed the phone back to the bedside table as he slinked easily back into the bed. The cold had coated his skin and his touch made Makoto shudder. Wrapping his arms around his shoulder, the larger man tugged him back into the bed, the warm bed, the bed that looked like the winter ground but only radiated heat. 

 

“Why are you up?” Sousuke whispered, nosing the soft hair.

 

Makoto didn’t answer at first, but relaxed and let his tongue do the same. “A patient I had brought to the hospital last week died today. Ieyasu Takagawa,” He muttered softly, but still distinctive. 

 

The name made Sousuke stop, tense, freeze. Winter was beginning to eat away Makoto too, slowly and surely. Sousuke had brought it upon him, dragged it into him, and now the web of Samezuka had wrapped around the angel’s heart, prepared to rip it clean out of his chest when the right time came. 

 

Makoto continued though, too tired to notice Sousuke’s shift. “He was only 29. I don’t know how he died….but I thought, I thought I saved him.” The soft hand reached up and pressed against his chest, over his heart where the bullet scar was, the scar that marked where he should have died but didn’t. “He…he shouldn’t have died. He was fine, I saved him.”

 

 

_You saved him._

_You saved him and I killed him._

_Don’t we make a fine team._

 

Lifting Makoto’s head, Sousuke placed a tender kiss on his lips, a kiss that hushed him and hushed the voices that repeated the end. _How was this any different?_ It asked him, skeptical, judging. 

 

“Everyone has their time. And maybe you just extended that man for a few more days,” he answered, stroking his hair, letting his fingertips down the nape of his neck, pulling him in closer. Sousuke didn’t want to see his face, see the eyes that probably pricked with tears. He didn’t want to see the monster reflected in those green eyes, only meant for children who only knew of spring and joy and nothing of lying and murder. 

 

_How was this any different?_

 

Soothing him, Sousuke said, “Go to sleep. There’s nothing you can do.”

 

In the dark room, the prison room, the room that protected but held them captive, Sousuke persuaded Makoto to fall asleep again, fall into those dreams that could get him to smile that gentle smile again. Sousuke would fall too, spin a cocoon around them made nothing but sweet memories that would melt on their tongue and laughter only shared in freedom. For now, this would be different, different because Sousuke Yamazaki kissed Makoto Tachibana, kissed him and began to break his legs of habit. 


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She screamed because the snow was burning her again, black and rotting as it fell. The snow was gray, sometimes flickering red as it drifted down. She screamed because the snow was burning again. She screamed for her, for her husband and her child crumpled under the ash.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was literally the hardest chapter to write because nothing was coming to my mind. I'm surprised this chapter is even shorter than chapter one! Hopefully all of you will pray that writer's block isn't creeping into this story too. (God, you have no idea what I would give for me to finish /one/ more story in the pile of the unfinished pieces) Think of chapter nine as a filler chapter. Nothing incredibly crucial happens, but don't overlook everything either. There's a lot of hidden eggs throughout the story that will really culminate towards the end. Maybe if I ever reach the end of this fic, I'l just post how some hints earlier connect to things later. Who knows. 
> 
> Anyways, onto more exciting news! In the last A/N I mentioned something like a companion happening with this fic and guess what, it's finally here or just started at least! I've collaborated with the lovely Jin in making a visual comic of the story. It makes me so excited to see everything illustrated out and I love it to a ridiculous degree. You can find the first 3 pages here (http://aevius.tumblr.com/tagged/To-the-Flower-of-Winter)! 
> 
> Hopefully, chapter 10 won't be as bad of a drag as chapter 9 unusually was. I guess I don't have it in me to give my boys a fluff break. But I'm trying. Chapter 10 will be all fluff, I promise! Cross my heart! Anyways, leave comments, reviews, feedback etc. for the chapter and if you can for the comic piece too because I really want to know what you guys think of it! 
> 
> Thanks!

She screamed because the snow was burning her again, black and rotting as it fell. The snow was gray, sometimes flickering red as it drifted down. She screamed because the snow was burning again. She screamed for her, for her husband and her child crumpled under the ash.

 

She screamed because they told her with skin falling off their bones, _You’ll never see a sight like this again. We promise. We promise with our lives._ But they lied because she did see it again, saw it now, saw it eat her husband and spit out what it burned onto her child. 

 

And she screamed because she thought she never had to see it again, not like this.

 

She didn’t want her son to hate snow. 

Never.

Never.

Never.

 

 

“What are you doing?” Sousuke laughed as he woke up with the sight of a lump of blanket pressed close to his face where another face should have been, a lump of white sheets where Makoto Tachibana was supposed to be. His hand pressed down, searched for the body beneath. He would be lying if he said he wasn’t afraid of Makoto leaving in the middle of the night when neither the winter dream nor the lonely dream plagued him, when all his mind remembered was closing his eyes one night and opening them in the morning.

 

But he heard a reassuring groan when his hand managed to find soft hair brushing against a smooth face. A sigh escaped from the back of his mind. Maybe it was the beast within him that felt relieved that the flower did not wilt yet, did not have its petals rot and fall off the buds. Nothing could touch them now, not here, not in this room that didn’t know any other life besides his own until today. 

 

Pushing the sheets away, pushing away the blanket of snow that engulfed the sakura tree, Sousuke saw Makoto, curled and hiding his red face from the daylight. 

 

“I slept here,” he finally answered, muffled as he pressed himself into the sheets. “And we…you did—”

 

“Give you a handjob?” Sousuke finished with a ringing chime. 

 

He only said it to see how red blood could boil under his skin, flushing with embarrassment as the events replayed in his mind, he was sure. The clarity of last night must have shook him awake this morning and he curled up like this before Sousuke could wake up. 

 

But he didn’t leave, didn’t try to sneak off while Sousuke could not stop him. 

He didn’t leave and that meant everything. 

 

Makoto slunk deeper under the covers, burying himself deeper into the sheets if that was possible for such an already large man. It was almost as if the bed wanted to hide him too, protect him from the humiliation, and the gaze of Sousuke Yamazaki. 

 

“Hey, come out of there,” Sousuke coaxed as best as he could, sitting up with his back against the headboard. His hands dug around, searching for the body and when he felt the brush of muscle, Sousuke gripped and began to tug up. 

 

It was like pulling a weed out of dry ground, uprooting it from its home. 

 

“I promise I won’t do anything else,” he added as he began to pull up Makoto’s arm, the first to be freed from the tangles of the bedsheets. He wouldn’t want to douse more gasoline over Makoto’s head, wouldn’t want him to suffocate and die over the stench alone. 

 

The lump that was curled up beside him began to relax and Sousuke wrapped his arms around the makeshift cocoon around Makoto. He nosed the soft brown hair, ran his fingers through it and watched them slip out between them like water slipping through the cracks. 

 

“You won’t do anything at all?”

 

Sousuke looked down, saw green eyes peer up. Color against the mundane, life against the corpses. “I won’t do anything at all.”

 

The tension that had gripped Makoto began to relax as more of his head slipped out of the covers. The blush that dusted his face had faded from its bright red and resorted back to a dulling pink against his skin. The tips of his ears, however, dulled slowly in comparison. Between the wisps of brown, his ears remained as red as ever. 

 

_Were you that scared that I’d touch you again?_

_Are you actually that scared of me?_

 

He wanted to ask, but he swallowed his words and let them settle with the ashes of the cigarettes he had long forgotten he smoked. All the words he wanted to say were stuck there and they were beginning to make him taste bitter things. 

 

Seizing the opportunity to shake his thoughts off of him like leaves that got caught in his short hair, Sousuke climbed on top of Makoto, pretending to get to the other side of the bed. He let his lips brush against his, heard the hitch in breath and felt the mouth under his tremble. The grass swayed with the devious wind that passed by, a force that tried to lift it out of the soil. Sousuke’s teal eyes must have looked like the ocean waters then, seductive in its calling, a siren to sailors. “I won’t do anything at all,” he repeated, “Until you make the first move next time.” 

 

Makoto’s eyes grew large with realization and surprise, his face turned red again and Sousuke left the bed with a laugh that reached his steps.

 

 

 

 

 

Sousuke yawned until the sides of his mouth hurt from stretching and his joints cracked as he stretched into it. “We should have grabbed coffee,” he finally said. “You were in such a hurry to leave.”

 

“You didn’t have to walk me back,” Makoto answered as he fidgeted besides Sousuke as they waited at the train station platform. The black thermal that was fitted normally the night before was now tugged and pulled and a bit loose, Sousuke noticed as he glanced from the corner of his eye. It was probably his fault as he tried to tug it over Makoto’s arms and head, desperate and strung with lust. 

 

Sousuke kept his gaze on Makoto, if he looked away he might disappear. The fear constantly ran through his mind. Blink and he’d be gone. So, he had resolved that he would never take his eyes off of him if he could help it and when he couldn’t help it either. How could the planets drift away from the sun when gravity was so strong? 

 

His lips edged themselves into a smile as he answered, “Well, this is what _should_ happen first, isn’t it?”

 

Makoto looked at him with brows furrowed, the lines between creasing deeper. Sousuke laughed as he placed his index finger between those brows, trying to soothe away the wrinkles that would surely rise from them in the future. Sousuke began ticking off the list with his free hand, “Walking home together, texting each other, first kiss, dating and then—”

 

Those large hands quickly covered Sousuke’s mouth before his next words. Makoto stammered with voice low, “Yamazaki-san, we’re in public.”

 

But between the giggling high school girls and the dazed early morning business commuters, being in public didn’t really mean much. “No one’s paying attention,” Sousuke managed to comment as he pried off his hands from his mouth, but not without giving each palm a discreet and gentle kiss. His fingers interlaced with Makoto’s, stroking each gently before he let their hands drop from each other. Sousuke tucked his hands into the comforts of his black pea coat and rocked on the heels of his dark brown brogues. 

 

“What?” Makoto asked, turning his head to look at Sousuke again. If such a happy man could look or sound the slightest bit annoyed, it would probably be echoed in that question. 

 

“Call me Sousuke.”

 

Makoto would have blushed, should have blushed, an intimacy with such a name. But, he probably saw those eyes that reflected the ocean look sad, too calm and almost lifeless. Maybe that suppressed the desire to turn beet red. But the voice of the sakura tree said it and let it slip with the wind of the train. “Okay, Sousuke,” he said.

 

How long had it been since someone had said his name with such tenderness and care? Makoto said his name as if his life was carried within those words. And Sousuke Yamazaki wanted to kiss him, but didn’t because he might cry, might cry into the kiss and let the other man taste the burnt snow. So, he resorted to the next best thing. He grabbed hold of the thin wrist and dragged him with him into the train carriage that was filling up. He would hold on and never let go, never take his eyes off.

 

Makoto Tachibana would never disappear.

Never. 

Never.

Never.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Makoto Tachibana ran down from the path of the coffee shop that usually served his vanilla latte with the two shots of expresso, passed the third bench near the maple tree the one that used to have the most leaves on its branches, climbed the stairs up from the garden pathway that led to the hospital building again. His heart galloped in his chest, nervous, anxious, excited and all the feelings that would make one heart’s beat faster than it should on a day that should have been normal, quiet and back to routine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continuance of the soumako!fluff. Compared to the last chapter, this one is definitely not as fluffy or at least the second half surely isn't. I was going to make this chapter much longer, but all the things that I wanted to be included--I eventually reasoned--had to be in its own chapter. So, chapter 11 is gonna get really good, smokin' good, sizzlin' bacon on the words good. Haha, okay maybe not that great, but it's definitely going to culminate into a scene that you're all ready for. 
> 
> Hopefully you enjoy this chapter. The next couple of chapters will be told in Makoto's pov, so I hope you like that too. Anyways, comment, review, feedback, talk about your theories or thoughts of the future. Anything! I want to see how your brain is working with the fic. I live and breathe off of comments, seriously. 
> 
> Have fun reading and hopefully I'll get chapter 11 up soon (whenever the piling of work from classes slow down for once).

Makoto Tachibana ran down from the path of the coffee shop that usually served his vanilla latte with the two shots of expresso, passed the third bench near the maple tree the one that used to have the most leaves on its branches, climbed the stairs up from the garden pathway that led to the hospital building again. His heart galloped in his chest, nervous, anxious, excited and all the feelings that would make one heart’s beat faster than it should on a day that should have been normal, quiet and back to routine.

 

“Tachibana-san, what are you doing here?” asked the new information desk worker, Mei. Her bobbed hair and sleek fringe fell in line with the tilt of her head as she peered over to him, standing by the cash register, almost about to order. 

 

The friendly smile eased itself onto his face, naturally, but the fatigue of the graveyard shift had the ends of his lips waver—hopefully, the young girl would not notice. “Just grabbing coffee before I head back home.”

 

His bones rattled with the strain of the night’s work and his voice still scratched with the small trace of cold. 

 

“Oh, are you grabbing coffee for him too, then?”

 

“Him…too?”

 

Mei blushed as her eyes shifted down, concentrating on the less than exciting polished wood floors of the cafe. Her black flats rubbed together as she rocked from side to side, embarrassed and shy. “Y-Yamazaki-san. Yamazaki Sousuke, your friend.” She glanced up and her smile wavered at Makoto’s eyes, wide with surprise. “Didn’t you know he was here? I saw him head out to the paramedic lot an hour or so ago.”

 

His desire for coffee was gone and his legs already propelled him forward. Maybe his heart had already raced long before he began to sprint. 

 

“What are you doing here?” Makoto asked, out of breath and face red lashed from the cold as he reached the table of mahjong players—now playing poker—with Sousuke sitting and joining in on the fun. He had ran down the corridor, narrowly missing gurneys and patients and doctors and nurses.

 

Sousuke cocked his head and flashed a smile Makoto could not get used to, but never wanted to either. “I came to pick you up. We’re walking home together.”

 

“Are you two part of a shoujo manga or something?” Daiki, his partner, burst out laughing as he swung his arm around Makoto’s neck and ruffled his hair. The comment already had his ears burning, luckily he had slipped on his beanie while he was outside. But Makoto couldn’t stop himself from smiling a little as he tried his best to pull off his partner off of him. Placing his palm firmly against the side of his head, black hair combed into a perfect quiff, and pushing him away. Daiki always teased him, told him that he was the younger brother he never had. Rubbing his shoulders, the medic flashed a grin towards Sousuke. “You take good care of my partner, all right?”

 

Sousuke nodded as he got out of the chair, letting another co-worker take the seat with the older men. They smoked and laughed as they all patted Sousuke on his back. “Come round again. We’ll get our payback next time.”

 

“Not sure old dogs like you can learn new tricks as great as that so quickly,” Sousuke joked as he walked over to Makoto’s side. He looked so comfortable in the dark brown pea coat that rested a little above his knee, black jeans and a burnt style black shirt and a leather black cap turned backwards on his head. It was a surprising change from the suits and ties or the running uniform he always wore. 

 

A heavy hand fell on top of Makoto’s head. Turning, the teal eyes crinkled as Sousuke’s face smiled, bright and brilliant and completely disarming. “Ready?”

 

His chest rose and fell, hard and heavy. Was he still trying to catch his breath after running so fast and so quickly? Or was it that solid hand firmly placed on top of his head, reassuring and warm, and the mingling scent of musk and sage that reminded him of thick forests and knotted roots that wrapped themselves around his legs reminding him that there was life beneath the snow?

 

Whichever it was, Makoto smiled sheepishly as he nodded. 

 

Daiki was right. They were part of a shoujo manga and somehow, he had filled the shoes of the heroine. But, if he could see that childish grin again, the one that stretched from ear to ear, the one that looked the rarest of them all on such a serious face, Makoto wouldn’t mind.

 

He would not mind if being in that reality if there he could catch a smile that belong to him and him alone.

Ah, this monopolizing desire. Sousuke had told him its name.

It lingered on his tongue, but he had yet to find it. 

 

 

 

Standing at the crosswalk light at the end of the street of the hospital, Makoto facing straight, Sousuke facing right, they stood with their feet angled in different directions, ready to pivot and walk to their respective apartments. Makoto stared. Sousuke stared. Neither of them budging an inch and the cold eating away the warmth that their clothes barely held in. He wished he had worn something more than a black and white striped long sleeve shirt, a black zip up and dark washed jeans but he had always rationalized that he wouldn’t be out in the cold for long anyways. 

 

So this stop in his walking, this break that let the chilly winds eat him up gave him more time to contemplate on his poor decisions. 

 

“Where are you going?” Sousuke asked puzzled, the lines of his forehead creasing deep along his smooth face. 

 

Makoto replied, “Home.” But his tone raised the answer into a question as if he was unsure himself. The new apartment building across the bakery was just walls that kept his things, had a kitchen and a bed to sleep in. Home was by the sea, a few miles from the coast of the ocean, up a steep hill with small staircases. It had voices of two twins who could not agree over anything and warm laughter of knowing parents. Home was not Tokyo. He had never found home here.

 

“Home is this way,” Sousuke pointed over in the direction of the train station that was a 15 minute ride to his apartment. _Was that the way home?_ Makoto found himself asking. If anything, Sousuke’s home was the very definition of a house. It was plain, empty and too large for just one person to live in. Loneliness echoed in the floorboards, and in the walls drained of color except white. But, the bed felt like home, warm and soft and held memories in its crevices with the same undeniable ability it held dreams and even whispered secrets that could only be said with the moon a mere dot in the sky. 

 

“Is it?” he found his voice asking before his mind could stop it from escaping.

 

Sousuke’s shoes crunched on the fallen leaves as he took a few steps towards Makoto. His hand reached down and brushed Makoto’s fingers, softly but discreetly. It was a warmth that sent electricity down his spine and a lingering heat where his skin was touched, almost as hot and as burning as the touches of the other night, burning him until he gasped and could only twist his body that yearned for more. 

 

“Yes, home is this way,” Sousuke smiled, soft and gentle. His fingers wrapped around Makoto’s wrist and tugged him towards the station. They continued to walk that way, hand around wrist. It was Sousuke’s version of hand holding, Makoto learned. Once in a while, as the time continued to pass for the carriage to arrive, Makoto would often feel the gentle hand squeeze him and catch the teal eyes look down at him and avert his gaze quickly, almost like he was afraid of losing him, afraid of him melting and slipping out of his fingers. 

 

Makoto wished he could interlace his hand with his, lock his fingers securely and squeeze in return to reassure him that he wasn’t going anywhere, not as long as Sousuke wanted him to be by his side. As a compromise of his limp and non-comforting wrist, Makoto took a small side step in, his scuffed boots tapped against Sousuke’s brogues. Makoto’s shoulder bumped gently against Sousuke, leaning into his side. This was enough, wasn’t it? The sensation of a body against his, heavy and solid and made nothing out of something that could melt like snow. It should be enough than what could ever be said.

 

In his dreams, he once told the snow rabbits that hopped away to make him like one of them.

He was glad he was not snow now, glad that Sousuke Yamazaki was not snow either. They did not have to strip off their flesh and take out their organs and pat ice into their forms. They were the same: skin, bones, and all. 

 

 

Days passed and the motions continued. Sousuke continued to swindle the paramedic crew of their money whenever they were bold enough to ask to play poker while Makoto was returning from his shift and changing back into warmer clothes, clothes not stained with blood or puke or sweat. Sousuke continued to take a hold of his wrist as they walked down to the train station, empty of people after the business commute. When the train came, Makoto would always sit in the seat closest to the exit, resting his head against the rail nearby the edge, between the doors and the seats. Eventually, halfway through according to Sousuke, his head would sway and rest in the crook of the other man’s shoulder until they reached the third stop. Makoto would always wake up with his nose pressed against Sousuke’s jacket, waking to fresh sage and the strong earth smell, clean and strong. 

 

He always turned beet red before the doors opened and would try to slip out ahead before Sousuke could stand. But, maybe he had caught up on his moves, read his actions in his skin because the hand would take hold of his wrist again and laugh, clear and fresh as water, sweet and thick as honey. “You really are a shoujo manga heroine, Makoto.”

 

And his face would twist as the humiliation spun deeper as he yelled back, “Shut up, Sousuke!” 

 

This only encouraged more laughter as they finally left and provoked Sousuke to brush, touch and whisper apologies into his ear while he shrugged off his coat by the time they got into the apartment and Makoto had found his spot to nap on the couch again, drained of energy and drained of dignity. 

 

In a few hours, Makoto would be greeted with the aroma of coffee, black and hot—now that the weather was getting colder. Sousuke would begin to set the table by the time Makoto was halfway through with the needed caffeine and lunch would soon come after.  Who knew homemade and prepared meals and fresh coffee and the hums of lonely songs of foreign composers could make the apartment feel what he had longed since he left Iwatobi for college several years ago. In a span of a few days, home seemed plausible in the bustling city, where stars were hazy and the moon looked yellow instead of its usual ivory hue. 

 

“Don’t you have work to go to?” Makoto found himself asking as he was scooping out rice for the both of them. 

 

“Nah, not while you’re here. Besides, Uozumi and Minami are taking care of the business. If there’s anyone I could trust, it’d be them.” Makoto heard a bittersweet tinge in his voice as if Sousuke was preparing himself to slip and fade away.

 

And in the flurry of train rides and playing poker with co-workers and brewed coffee and hot lunches, Makoto grew desperate and afraid of a man who was becoming a snow rabbit and preparing to leave him in an apartment that grew into a home. 

 

“You own that bar, right? The one I saw you walk out of that night?” The night he had his fever, his dream, and the strange nostalgia of memories that hit him when he saw the tall man trying to catch a light. 

 

Sousuke sounded a “Mhmmm” as he began plating the dishes. 

 

Makoto sat in his seat as he tapped on his chopsticks, his nerves making him more fidgety but the composure never faded so long as Sousuke did not turn around. Those teal eyes would render him into a nervous wreck and surely then, he’d hear the desperation. “Why don’t we go have a drink there?”  

 

“Why?” A biting question with tense shoulders. The plate trembled in his hands. “We don’t need to go there.”

 

Makoto felt he was treading a tightrope all of a sudden. Humans were dangerous, didn’t he come to that conclusion once? His fingers stopped playing with the chopsticks as he stared at the tension in Sousuke’s shoulder blades under the thin gray t-shirt. “Is…something wrong?”

 

“We can go somewhere else. A different bar, there’s plenty in Tokyo.”

 

And the man in the suit who sat in the tree, swinging though the branch could not move, began to choke on his words. Instead of the end of winter, as he had once suggested, cleverly and all in his mind, it seemed like the real man repeated that winter will never end, that this was the only season the world knew of. Nothing came before and nothing came after winter. The tree in the middle was just a phenomena and Makoto should not think so highly of it. 

 

“Sousuke, what are you hiding?”

 

“Nothing.”

 

“Then take me there.”

 

“No.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because there’s nothing special there.”

 

“We’re just going out for drinks, it doesn’t need to be special.”

 

“No.”

 

Sousuke never once looked over at Makoto, never put down that trembling plate even though it was growing more and more obvious that it was shaking. The tension never eased and Makoto felt the chill eat him from the leg up again. 

 

He looked down and brushed his fingers over the smooth surface of the table, keeping his fears at bay and his tone level. “What are we?”

 

Finally, he turned his head, halfway to see Makoto from the corner of his eye. “What are you talking about?”

 

“Are we really going out?” Makoto almost laughed. He never thought these words would slip out of his lips. He had heard it countless of times, but never expected himself to say it himself. Is this what they felt? Cold. Isolation. Distance. “You said you would teach me how to be selfish. This is the time, I think.” Makoto bit down on his lip, chewed on it until he tasted blood. 

 

Sousuke sighed as he placed the plate down, he gripped the edge of the marble countertop of the kitchen. With head hung low and his shoulders easing, he answered, “Okay. I’ll take you there.” He rubbed the nape of his neck as he turned around with a defeated smile. “Not my fault if it turns out to be a shitty first date.”

 

“First time for everything,” Makoto said with that fake edging on real smile of his. Being demanding was new to him, it crawled under his skin the wrong way and scratched his tongue, but if that was the only way to get Sousuke to open up, perhaps he did have to start down new paths. 

 

• • •

 

Makoto sighed as he leaned against the brick wall outside of Shark House. His determination and confidence the night before had disappeared as he had made his trek towards the bar. _Ah, this was a bad idea. What if Sousuke was still in a bad mood from the other day too? Who wants to go on a date at a bar anyways?_ Shutting his eyes and tilting his head back to rest against the wall, he began to wish he had demanded for something normal like a dinner or a simple movie. Something remotely date-like. But he couldn’t take back his words and couldn’t undo his walk. Now, he waited for Sousuke to let him in. Apparently the bar itself was highly exclusive. 

 

As people began to slip in, more and more the later it got, Makoto wondered if he was dressed appropriately for the location. The men and women were adorned, flashing brands as if it was their reputation with sleek suits and elegant dresses, he found himself self-conscious of his own attire, a simple black leather jacket over a chambray shirt and black jeans. 

 

Walking home to change was a tempting option the more fancier and dressier the clientele became. But before he could act, voices cut through his mind. 

 

“Oi, oi, oi. You think we’re fucking dumbasses? One pack is worth more than this roll, kid. Where’s the rest of the money?” 

 

“All the m-money is there.”

 

“It’s all there my fucking ass,” a second voice chimed. Shoes scuffed the cement sidewalk, a loud thud and then the voice of the teenager groaned. 

 

The first voice shouted again, “Where’s the rest, bastard?” 

 

All the response was a groan. 

 

“I’m going to count to three. You tell me where the rest of the cash is or else I’m going to pull the trigger and paint the sidewalk red with your fucking tiny brain.”

 

Makoto’s heart began to race. He heard the click of the gun being cocked. He heard the teenager crying. 

He bolted from where he stood and rounded the entrance gate of the bush wall where the three voices were. The teenager was pressed against the floor, gun to his head, blood already running down half of his face from being beaten up. 

 

“Stop!” Makoto yelled. And what next? What could he have possibly done next? He couldn’t even leap and cover the kid if he tried. All he had was his voice and a body just as weak and susceptible to bullet wounds as the next human being. 

 

The men tilted their heads to look over at Makoto. The one with the gun sneered, “Who the fuck are you?”

 

“Let the boy go.”

 

“You got the rest of the cash? Because we’re not letting him go until we get what is owed.”

 

“I—” He didn’t have the cash, surely not nearly enough for what the transaction deal had in mind. But, he needed to stall, needed someone to come by and see, call the police, save the kid before it was too late. Nerves and fear turned into sweat the longer Makoto stared at the polished black gun placed firmly against the blood red temple. The boy was crying, tears and snot and his body trembled under the thug’s foot. 

 

“I’ll call the police. I already dialed the number, if you guys don’t leave now, you’ll be arrested.” Hopefully they didn’t see through the flimsy lie, completely transparent even to the untrained ear. His heart beat pounded against his chest until he felt it throb in his throat. He almost felt like it was choking him. God, he really could use a drink right about now or even before he tried to become hero. Liquid courage to strengthen his bones. 

 

The second thug who was standing casually spat out, “Do you know who the fuck we are? You’re messing with the Sam—” But he stopped mid-way, and the smirk he held with pride dropped drastically. The confidence that they flashed was nowhere to be found. “W-we should go.” The second man motioned the first quickly. He glanced down at the boy before he barked, “We’ll pick this up later, Takao.” 

 

And with that, the gun was tucked away and the two began to run, panicked. 

 

Makoto sighed a relief, breathing out the anxiety and the adrenaline. 

 

“Are you stupid?” a familiar voice asked, stern but humored at the same time. The breath brushed the skin on his neck, and the voice replacing the sound of his pulse made him jolt, turning around, narrowly stumbling back. 

 

“Sousuke!” Makoto exclaimed, his hand placed on his chest, easing his heart to a slow thump again.

 

“Did you not see the gun?”

 

Makoto cupped his face, feeling how hot his cheeks were against his cold hands. He wondered if it was the frightening red complexion that scared them off. “It was the only thing I could see,” he grumbled. Remembering the kid, he was about to head over and see if there were any serious injuries that needed to be treated, but a firm grip around his arm stopped him.

 

“Let’s go inside,” Sousuke urged as he jerked his head, motioning towards the doors of Shark House. 

 

“But the boy,” Makoto trailed as he looked back at the body slumped and moaning on the ground.

 

“He’ll be okay. No one dies here.” His brows furrowed as he turned back to Sousuke, saw truth and sincerity and sadness glimmer in the teal waters of his eyes. But while Makoto stood his ground, the taller man in his white button down shirt and fitted navy suit slumped his shoulders as he sighed. “Stay here. Don’t go near the boy.”

 

Makoto nodded and watched as Sousuke half-jogged over to where Uozumi stood by the bar’s entrance. He said something and jerked his thumb over to the direction of the teen, still writhing in pain. Uozumi nodded and followed behind Sousuke. He gave a friendly smile to Makoto, but said nothing more as he picked up the teenager. “Come on,” he heard the man say before helping him walk towards a car parked out front. “Don’t get blood on the seats, okay?”

 

Makoto heard himself give out a small breathless laugh from his relief and Uozumi’s comment, sounding so normal as if he knew how bad blood stained the car. 

 

The warmth of a hand slipped down from his wrists and laced themselves between his fingers. It tugged his attention away from the car and back to Sousuke, the shadow of the lamplight almost covering most of his face. But Makoto could see those radiant teal that crinkled as he smiled. “You look like you need a drink. Lucky you, It’s on the house.”

 

He nodded once and let himself be pulled in. 

No one died there, Sousuke had said. 

No one died.

No one.

 

Makoto’s mind echoed familiar words, but he brushed them aside as the clinks of glasses and laughter wafted over him, and the thick warmth saved him from the cold. But it continued to ask, continued in the back of the black corners of his mind where he dared not look.

 

_Do you think you’re a god?_  


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What did they even talk about that night, Makoto had long forgotten. It slipped with ease with the haze of laughter and sly strokes on the hand under the bar counter and sweet rum that warmed the back of his throat. The boy with the blood and the gun and the deal gone wrong disappeared. The murmurs of his mind disappeared with every drink he downed and every smooth caress. Even the heavy weight of black eyes in the shadows could not pierce through the surreal haze.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is the long awaited chapter! I actually wrote this all in a day so like forgive everything that seems out of character for both Makoto and Sousuke as well as my own writing. I just finished writing a 6 page paper for class and just hopped on this as sort of a stress reliever/break from academic writing (still have a 4 page paper due monday I haven't started) so that's my justification for anything weird here. 
> 
> Also, someone needs to stop me from trying to write smut because I really just can't. Or I need like a co-writer for these scenes. Who wants to volunteer? Anyways, sorry for the delay. It's now around the time for midterms so, chapter 12 might take a while to be updated too. Hopefully not, but who knows with professors and their shenanigins. 
> 
> So, please comment, review, leave some feedback or thoughts. What do you think will happen? Will this end happy? Hell, even I don't know. I'm winging it folks, so I can be easily swayed. (I might even end up writing two endings just to please both parties) hahah, yeah this is clearly an author's note of someone sleep deprived. For the sex scenes, I definitely encourage you to listen to Arctic Monkey's AM album, just to get into the groove even if there really is no groove and these boys last like 4 seconds. 
> 
> Okay, totally shutting up now. ENJOY!

What did they even talk about that night, Makoto had long forgotten. It slipped with ease with the haze of laughter and sly strokes on the hand under the bar counter and sweet rum that warmed the back of his throat. The boy with the blood and the gun and the deal gone wrong disappeared. The murmurs of his mind disappeared with every drink he downed and every smooth caress. Even the heavy weight of black eyes in the shadows could not pierce through the surreal haze. 

 

What did they even talk about that night with low voices and breathless laughter, with heads leaning in closer until their foreheads touched. The dim lights of the bar and the chatter of the crowd blurred in his mind, just as time slowed and sped up. Oh, but he did remember the brief moments when women, beautiful women approached them or more specifically to Sousuke. They smiled their diamond smiles, white and glistening. Their hands, slender touched his shoulder, feeling the muscle under that white dress shirt that framed his body well. They asked for drinks, for an exchange of numbers, for company for the night. 

 

And the taste of rum grew bitter in his mouth.

 

Eventually, Sousuke gave that charming business smile and told him he was busy tonight to entertain their whims. Makoto wondered if he would be brushed off quickly like that when he grew bored of him because it would happen as it always did. He placed a cube of ice in his mouth and it didn’t melt. Slowly, without realizing it, Sousuke Yamazaki was turning him into snow when he wanted to be human, soft and warm. 

 

Sousuke glanced over and noticed Makoto’s definite attitude change, with tenser shoulders and even the inability to give him a fake smile said plenty. “Hey, what’s wrong?” Sousuke asked his voice dropped low and laced with the gentle concern that sounded sweet, would probably taste as sweet too. 

 

He leaned closer, his face too close but also not close enough. “Makoto?” he whispered. 

 

His ears rang with the voice saying his name, repeating and never stopping. Maybe it was jealousy, maybe it was the alcohol—he really hadn’t been paying attention to many glasses of rum he’s had so far and not to mention the other drinks ordered like scotch or gin. Maybe it was the atmosphere of laughter and dim lighting and the fact that they were hidden in the shadows, away from it all—both in public but not. 

 

There were so many maybes as there would always be. But he could not deny the fact that he leaned in and lifted his head up to kiss him, tasting the hint of lime and salt and tequila lingering on his lips. Makoto pulled away with those wide teal eyes that stared back in surprise. The Caribbean waters for once was still and strong in its gaze. Makoto smiled as he licked his lips, “I forgot how much I hated the taste of tequila.” The sour taste reminded him of university days that were better left forgotten. 

 

Sousuke’s mouth parted, ready to whisper something but a shadow that came over their already dark corner made him shift his gaze. Those Caribbean eyes rocked from its stillness to anger. If he was not staring so intensely at them, so rapt up in their gaze, the quick flicker would have een lost to the walls of the room. 

 

“Boss,” a man in a slick black suit called out, his brown hair perfectly mused and his fringe swept to the side. 

 

“What, Minami?” Sousuke asked, his tongue biting. 

 

“Seijuuro is here. He wants to speak with you.” Just the name alone made those shoulders tense up and Makoto began to wonder who this Seijuuro was. 

 

Sousuke sighed tired and annoyed. “Okay, I’ll be right there.” He got off the stool and glanced towards the entrance door where a large group stood. He slipped on the navy blue blazer and buttoned the middle, smoothing out the wrinkles and creases that surely showed from having been draped over the counter. 

Looking up, in the dimness of the space, he saw a tall man with brilliant red hair slicked back. Even in the darkness, his gold eyes were piercing as they scanned the room and locked onto Sousuke standing. A shark of a smile stretched as he have a wave and Sousuke gave a curt nod in return.

 

“Stay here, okay? I’ll be back soon.”

 

He didn’t even wait for Makoto to say okay. Before he muttered the words, the man was already three paces away from him, and farther by the time the word left his mouth. The warmth that radiated by his side was gone and all he had now was the dulling burn of his drink. So, Makoto drank more to compensate.

 

Placing the glass against his temple, he turned to look at Sousuke chatting with Seijuuro, the red haired man who Makoto now noticed was taller than Sousuke. They stood with their backs against the brick wall besides the entrance. The large group of suits mingled in the shadows, a few were outside taking a smoke but each body was framed and lined and built with alertness. Seijuuro, it seemed, was a well guarded man. 

 

They spoke with lowered heads and Sousuke kept his eyes steady on the ground, lowered and tired. His hands were slipped into his pockets casually as he stretched out his legs and turned his foot from side to side, watching the light bounce off his polished black shoes. Seijuuro seemed to be the more chatty one, Makoto noted, or perhaps Sousuke didn’t want to talk though he seemed fine when they were alone together by the bar. 

 

The easy smile that the red haired man carried finally left with a blink and those gold eyes hardened as he leaned closer in to Sousuke. His hunched shoulders grew stiff from the whispered words. He lifted his head shifted his gaze until he reached the gaze of Makoto. He smiled slow and weakly as if standing the red headed man drained his very life. Sousuke continued to listen and nod, but never let his eyes wander away. Makoto felt dragged in, enveloped in the teal waters that clung to him out of desperation. 

 

He wondered what they talk about, but he could make out one thing that Sousuke said that night between his nods and sad smiles. “I’ll do it,” he said.

 

Makoto only noticed because that was the first time his eyes broke their lock. He kept his gaze steady on the floor as he turned his head to Seijuuro who smiled that vicious smile with lightening sparking in those eyes of liquid gold. He clapped a solid hand onto Sousuke’s shoulder and burst with a loud laugh. Sousuke didn’t smile. His lips moved quickly as he rolled his shoulder to knock off Seijuuro’s grip as he took a step forward. But Makoto saw this fingers dig into the jacket as he pulled him back, his lips close to Sousuke’s ears as he whispered something. Whatever it was, whatever that entire conversation was, Sousuke returned to Makoto’s side, quiet and clearly distracted.

 

He tapped his fingers a few times on the sleek counter before he turned back to Makoto who was busy nursing his drink in hand. “You want to leave?” he asked, his voice strained and unsteady with nerves. 

 

“Yeah,” Makoto said as he took one last sip of the rum, no longer sweet on his tongue. All it did was burn his throat. 

 

The walk was silent too except for the sounds of their shoes clacking and scuffled against the pavement. Sousuke didn’t hold his wrist as he usually did when they walked home together so Makoto buried his hands in the pockets of his jacket to give himself the long forgotten warmth of being alone. As they walked, he made a purpose in stepping on the dried brown leaves strewn across the floor, crunching and crackling as they went. He needed more sound than the deafening ring of nothing. 

 

“That was a shitty first date, wasn’t it?” Sousuke asked, his voice slicing through the quiet and cold air. 

 

Makoto laughed and his lips curved into a smile, a first in a now seemingly long night. “What do you think?” 

 

“I think it was shit,” he laughed as he answered. His hand reached up and rubbed the nape of his neck, Makoto realized it was a habit when he was embarrassed, instead of blushing like he did. “I was shit,” he corrected himself. “But then again, I’ve never…taken anyone out on a date before.”

 

Makoto lifted a brow, surprised. He tilted his head as he looked Sousuke’s way who was chewing on his lower lip and avoiding eye contact now. He wanted to laugh. For such a grown man in nice suits and a usually cool demeanor, Sousuke Yamazaki was actually still a boy at heart. 

  
“Are you lying?”

 

“I’m not. I’ve just never _dated_ anyone before. I’ve done other things just not…you know,” Sousuke’s fingers dug into his skin. Makoto was afraid if he gripped any harder, he might snap his neck off. “I’ve just never done this before.”

 

Maybe this is why Makoto felt so comfortable around Sousuke Yamazaki. They both stumbled through relationships and now they were stumbling with hands interlocked. 

 

Together, and not alone. 

 

 

 

It was a few minutes until they reached Makoto’s apartment. A few minutes of cold and of leaves crunching under their feet, and of Sousuke Yamazaki growing more and more embarrassed for the first time as he tripped over his words describing his aversion to commitments in relationships. Makoto had never seen someone become so shy before outside of himself. And for once, he teased him about it, only to make the man turn his head away from Makoto for the rest of the way home. 

 

They stood by the door now, Makoto standing inside the apartment and Sousuke leaning against the door frame. A warmth had eased over them, despite the lingering chills of the season. Sousuke rested his head against the cold frame as he looked at Makoto with the most tender of gazes, the same gaze someone would use to stare at something that could melt away. 

 

“What?” Makoto asked confused but laughing. 

 

“You know, you never answered me.” He slipped his hands back into the pockets of his pants again. 

 

“Answer what?”

 

“If it was a horrible date?”

 

_Was it?_ he asked himself. Sure, he had became friends for the first time with jealousy and its green eyes. He felt cold and isolated and distanced as Sousuke walked over to the red haired man whose eyes were the color of melted gold. But, was that it? There was more to it, wasn’t there? There was their laughter, and those gentle, circular strokes that lingered in the nerves of his skin. There were whispered stories that he could not recall but still left a warm sensation in the inner linings of his stomach. And there was Sousuke, embarrassed and shy, stroking the back of his neck and still a high school boy hidden deep within the layers of suits and shirts and watches. 

 

Makoto smiled as he shook his head, “No, it wasn’t.”

 

“In that case,” Sousuke took a half step forward, “can I ask for another kiss?”

 

He had done it so spontaneously that for the rest of the night, Makoto had forgotten he had kissed Sousuke at the bar and now his lips tasted like tequila again. Heat rose to his cheeks and burned to the tips of his ears. Sousuke laughed as he watched Makoto fidget and fumble, the memory slipping back in. 

 

“Okay,” he said, waving it off though his voice sounded a bit dejected. “Next time then.” Standing upright again, he took a step back and the cold wafted in easily without his body there. Funny how quickly cold slipped in without Sousuke around. “Good night, Makoto.” He took a half step back and turned to leave.

 

The cold was too much. The rum made him bold in its dull heat and sweet taste. His tongue desired the taste of tequila again. “Wait,” he called out, reaching out to grab hold of Sousuke’s arm. The man turned and Makoto felt the words jumble in the back of his throat. “Just another kiss?”

 

His lips twitched into a smirk. “Well, I can’t guarantee it’ll stop at _just_ a kiss,” Sousuke teased. 

 

Maybe it was the alcohol. Maybe it was the women. Maybe it was the desire of warmth when all he felt was cold. Or maybe he just really wanted more than a kiss at that moment in time. There were so many maybes that it froze him. 

 

Sousuke jokingly said, “I’ll close my eyes if that’ll make you feel better.” And he did. He closed them and the teal eyes did not pierce his skin or sink into the depths of his soul. But looking at him, vulnerable and waiting for something as simple as a kiss, it made his heart twist and beat against the cage of his bones. Hesitant, Makoto crossed the small distance between them and gave him a delicate kiss, soft and barely there. It was more like a passing brush really and Sousuke opened one eye to see Makoto leaning away. 

 

“What? That’s it?” he asked surprised. 

 

Makoto flushed at the response. “You said just a kiss!”

 

Sousuke laughed. He slipped one arm around Makoto’s waist and gently tugged him forward, pressed against his body. “God, I’m just going to be teaching you everything, aren’t I?” 

 

He loved that breathless laughter, loved how even that caressed his face with such delicacy. And he loved how each breathless laugh led to Sousuke dipping his head slightly and pressing his lips to his. It always started like this, slow and careful, soft and gentle. And then a hunger would kick in and his kiss would deepen until it wasn’t. He would kiss Makoto with greed tinged in his lips, with desire and warmth that burned him more than the strongest of alcohol could. 

 

Tequila didn’t taste so sour anymore. 

 

 

 

Drunken confidence, that was what it was. Drunken confidence of lip biting and tugging and tender licks over Makoto’s lips to soothe the pain. Drunken confidence that had Sousuke physically throw Makoto over his shoulder as he carried him over to the bedroom and let him fall into the sheets. Drunken confidence that had them both throwing off coats and unbuttoning each other’s shirts, craving skin, craving warmth, craving another heart beat to bounce off of. It wasn’t eagerness, it was desperation as all their actions were from beginning to end. Desperate to fill the black hole, desperate to ease the loneliness, desperate to change oneself after years of habit. 

 

Sousuke leaned down and kissed Makoto again, that unchaste and hungry kiss, while his fingers worked quick and nimbly to unbutton and unzip Makoto’s jeans and slip those burning hands around the waistband of his boxer briefs and slid all of it off with ease. Tossing those to the side, Sousuke pulled away, leaving Makoto’s lips red and swollen and trembling. His teal eyes washed over his body, bare except for his chambray shirt still on, but unbuttoned and exposing his chest. He felt like he was being admired, held in those eyes with the same delicacy one would hold porcelain. 

 

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Sousuke asked as he kept his gaze soft and steady. 

 

All Makoto could do was nod. He was afraid his voice might crack and make Sousuke stop. That was the last thing he wanted now. He didn’t want the cold anymore. 

 

_Make me human again before I turn to snow_. 

 

He asked for lotion after he quipped that Makoto more likely than not did not have lube around the house. Naturally, he blushed again, and covered his face with a pillow nearby. Sousuke’s laugh rang as he walked to wear Makoto pointed and came back. 

 

The bed dipped again as Sousuke returned. Makoto lifted the pillow and saw the tender eyes peer back at him. He seemed afraid too, nervous even. “I’m going to prep you, okay? So it won’t hurt…later.” 

 

He nodded again as he debated whether or not to keep his face covered or to temporarily toss the pillow aside. It seemed Makoto’s mind moved slower than reality because as he mulled over the two options, he felt Sousuke’s finger slip into him and if he had planned to release the pillow, he couldn’t. He just couldn’t. Slowly, another finger was inserted, fingering and stretching, twisting and curling ever so gently. The sensation felt strange. It wasn’t painful, but it had yet to reach pleasure, had yet to pull him out gasping and panting and skin sensitive to even the slightest of touches. 

 

The pillow he grasped so tightly onto began to lift and the peek of moonlight slipped into his vision again and those ocean water eyes. “I’m going to put it in now, okay?” he said like the wind breeze. “I’ll go slow, but it’s still going to hurt the first time. Tell me if it hurts too much though. I’ll stop.”

 

He kept on reassuring him, repeating the kindness and it intoxicated him more so than the alcohol. 

 

“You can do it,” Makoto answered finally, his voice still cracking but cracking under the desire for more of Sousuke, more of the tender and fluttering touches and the warmth that never disappeared wherever his hands brushed along his skin. 

 

Maybe he tried to distract the sensation of pain by kissing him, kissing him deep until he couldn’t breathe as he plunged himself in. No amount of preparation could fully stop the pain. He gasped and let out a choked back whimper as Sousuke eased himself to the hilt. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, cupping and stroking and caressing his face, brushing his thumb over the corners of Makoto’s eyes, leaving with a residue of tears. He repeated he was sorry, but he continued to thrust anyway, slowly rocking. 

 

When did the pain turn to the slightest tinge of pleasure? Was it when Sousuke kissed him and ran his fingers down his chest, rubbing and twisting each nipple, eliciting more cries, more moans? Was it when Sousuke slipped down further and ran his hand up and down his cock, already hard and dripping? Or maybe it was further back before all this? Maybe it was when he visited the hospital day after day at the same time, giving him the company he never knew he wanted, and offered a home inside a shell of a body that he could never find in a city like Tokyo, a city with hazy stars and no sound of the crashing waves. 

 

“Makoto,” he repeated over and over again as he continued his rhythm. Makoto closed his eyes as he dug his fingers had let go of cloth and sheets and desired to clutch into the flesh that belonged to Sousuke Yamazaki, the man, the human, the warmth of his empty life. 

 

Maybe it was that drunken confidence. Maybe it was the jealousy. Maybe it was pure lust. Or maybe it was the truth prying his mouth open. But when he felt himself about to come, he breathed it out as if he was releasing life to the words. 

 

“Sousuke, I love you.”

 

His heart pounded fast and hard. He wasn’t sure if he really said it. He couldn’t hear, wasn’t sure if Sousuke heard it under his own pants. But, he rode out his pleasure with a cry and Sousuke came just after, kissing as he kept thrusting until the end. 

 

Makoto wondered if he should repeat it now, but the drunken confidence had faded. So he kept the words locked up again in the back of his throat, prepared to be said some other time. 

 

They laid in the bed together, Makoto curled up beside Sousuke, his head resting on the crook of his arm. How comfortable and lazy and tiring this all was. For the first time, Makoto Tachibana felt content and satisfied. He brushed his hand over the black curve of the tattoo that ran over the gentle curve of his chest, black armor he once thought. Looking at it closer now, Makoto realized if he stared at the black ink for too long, he’d start to believe that he was staring at empty space, as if Sousuke had been amputated and the darkness of the universe held parts of his body together in the resemblance of the human anatomy. 

 

“I like your tattoo,” Makoto whispered. “It’s so…beautiful.”

 

Sousuke’s long fingers ran gently through Makoto’s hair, tangling themselves in it, running down to the nape of his neck and even stroking down along his spine. “You thought that about my smoking too,” he replied. His laughter echoed and rumbled in Makoto’s ear pressed close to his body. “Sometimes I think you like certain parts of me and not really me.”

 

“They’re a part of you. Of course they would be beautiful.” Makoto’s green eyes flickered up and his mouth curved into a smile. 

 

“God, you’re so cute.” Sousuke faked a groaned as he pulled Makoto to him and kissed him again. Delicate and smiling against his lips. 

 

Managing to pull away, he rested his eyes on the black artwork again. His fingers traced the curve of the tattoo as if he could read the history and memory in Sousuke’s skin. Finally, he asked, “This tattoo, what’s it supposed to be?”

 

Muscles tensed under him and Sousuke’s fingers stopped running through his hair briefly. He worried he had asked the wrong question at the wrong time. But, he finally answered, “It’s for my mom. I got it as a memory of her.”

 

“She’s dead?”

 

“Yeah, both my parents actually,” he breathed out. 

 

“I’m sorry.”

 

Sousuke smiled as he looked down. “Don’t be. I was young anyways.”

 

Young or not, Makoto knew he remembered. His voice was that of someone who remembered. But Makoto didn’t call him out on his lie because no child needs to explain to someone else the memories of pain. Who needed to relive all that again? Who needed to muse over lives they couldn’t save? If they did, surely they’d be haunted in their dreams. Surely, death wasn’t a thing that needed remembering.

 

He said that, but he remembered every single one, down to what their scars looked like at the end of the day. 

 

 

 

 

In the blur of the days that followed, Sousuke’s visit to the hospital grew infrequent. Business at the bar was busier than normal, but he still dropped by Makoto’s apartment late in the afternoon when Makoto was home from his shift and rejuvenated from his nap. If sex had done anything to them, Makoto noticed how much bolder Sousuke became. He touched and kissed him more. Sousuke would often come up from behind while Makoto was pouring out the cups of coffee and wrap those muscular arms around his torso. He’d kiss the back of his neck as his hand slithered down to the waistband of his boxers. Makoto had to admit he’d become addicted to the touch. After the throbbing pain had disappeared the first time around and the pleasure of climaxing increased in the pits of his stomach, Makoto craved more and more each time. 

 

If sex had changed them, it was that they grew more desperate. But Sousuke didn’t change in the way he held him, delicate and almost fragile. He still rocked slow and still stroked him, coaxing him to come first. He would whisper in his ear, _I want you to feel great. So long as you feel good, I’m okay._ How spoiled he had become, accepting this greedy and hungry, shaped perfectly with Sousuke’s words and hands and kisses. 

 

This warmth was intoxicating. 

No rum could compare.

 

 

 

“Do you have work today?” Sousuke asked, his head resting on Makoto’s lap as he held some papers in his hands—contracts and transaction logs he had told him once. Even though he was busy, Sousuke always dropped by the apartment.

 

Makoto dropped the book he was holding onto his chest as he glanced down at Sousuke. He ran his hands through the short dark hair, smooth and soft, reminiscent of the stray cats he would pick up and look after back home. His lips twitched into a smile. Sousuke was like a cat if he really thought about it. Moody and independent, but worthwhile to know. 

 

He answered, “No, but I’m on call tonight.”

 

Sousuke tilted his head back to peer up. His lips pursed and then eased into a frown. “So we’re not doing it tonight?”

 

“We’re definitely not doing it tonight,” Makoto answered, shoving his palm into the other man’s face. But it was useless. Sousuke grabbed hold of his hand and kissed each finger, trailing his lips down the digits and towards the palm. 

 

Sousuke glanced up at him through those long lashes and a devious smirk splayed cross his face. “Okay, we won’t do it.” 

 

“What are you plotting?” Makoto asked straightening up as Sousuke climbed over him. 

 

“Stress reliever, just in case,” he answered as he began to slide Makoto’s sweat pants down. 

 

“I don’t need a stre—” Sousuke stopped him with a kiss, a kiss biting and one that had Makoto’s lips part with instinct. 

 

“Shut up, Tachibana. I’m spoiling you, remember?” He kissed alongside his mouth and down his jawline. But instead of making him slip off his shirt as he usually did, he took a hold of the hem and brought it up to Makoto’s lips. “Here, keep this in your mouth and shut up or else the neighbors will hear.” 

 

Lust and a pounding heart made him reluctant and he bit down on the shirt. He watched as Sousuke kissed his way down and felt his fingers run along his length, stroking it again until it was hard. Gently, he ran his tongue along his cock. The sensation alone made him moan and the sound encouraged Sousuke to do more. Slowly he eased his mouth around Makoto’s cock and took him deep. His head bobbed up and down and his tongue each time teased and licked the head. His stomach twisted and fire burned in him in places he couldn’t reach. Instinct made his hips jerk and buckle. His moans grew muffled with the shirt in his mouth. 

 

His fingers reached down and buried them in Sousuke’s hair. Eventually, his mouth couldn’t hold the shirt any longer, and shallow pants escaped. He probably should have gave Sousuke a warning, but the pleasure was too much. All that left his mouth were moans and words cut off with pants. He climaxed and his hand released its grip of those dark short hair. Tired, Makoto barely lifted  when he saw Sousuke swallow. 

 

“Spit it out, Sousuke!”

 

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand as he smiled. “Too late.” Makoto leaned his head back against the headboard. Sousuke Yamazaki was too unpredictable for him. “Does this mean I can’t kiss you?”

 

“No!” he shouted flustered as he began to slip up his underwear and pants again. 

 

 

 

 

The phone began to vibrate on the night stand. Makoto’s hands reached out, fumbling in the dark to get it. He picked it up and pressed it to his ear. “Hello, this is Tachibana.” His voice was coarse and quiet and barely out of the grogginess of slumber. Sousuke’s body still holding onto Makoto from behind. He stirred slightly as the hospital receptionist’s voice echoed on the phone. He quickly replied that he’d be there before he hung up. Quickly he freed himself from Sousuke and searched in the dark for whatever clothes were strewn on the floor. He wasn’t even sure if the shirt he picked up was his or not. 

 

Not even smelling the colognes left behind on the shirts could distinguish the two. 

 

The sheets shifted and Sousuke’s voice mumbled, “Where are you going?”

 

“Hospital called. There’s been an accident and they’re short on hand. I’ll be back in the morning.” Makoto pulled the shirt down and slipped on socks.

 

“Do you want me to pick you up?”

 

He wished Sousuke could see his smile in the dark, wished that the moon was not blocked by gray clouds, wished that they were both in total darkness. He wished he had said what he said the first night they were together again: I love you. But he didn’t. Instead, he opted for a, “No, you sleep in. You have work too.” 

 

He fumbled onto the bed and found Sousuke’s face, giving him a tender kiss before he left the bedroom. “I’ll be back in the morning,” he said reassuringly. He locked the door behind him and smiled despite the cold. He walked down the sidewalk past the cars, a few with the headlights left on, and with the people of the night lazying around, smoking and chatting away. They didn’t feel the cold either, it seemed. Their eyes flickered up as they watched him hurry to work. 

 

He carried the warmth with him as he entered the cold, dark city. 

No rum could be as sweet. 

No alcohol as burning.

No home so delicate as the cage of Sousuke’s bones.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There was a song, wasn’t there asking what if God was human. Makoto remembered recalled a Russian philosopher too who asked the same question. What if God was among humans, what if God was human himself? What would he say? What would the world sound like?
> 
> God among humans.
> 
> Charging. Clear. Silence.
> 
> God as human.
> 
> Charging. Clear. Silence. 
> 
> What would he say?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of things going on college wise so everything will be slow. I managed to finally squeeze out every bit of imagination and creative juices for this chapter though before I cram for my Russian midterm this wednesday. ARG!!!! I wanted to post this before I get massive writer's block again, so here you go. 
> 
> From this point on, there will be 4 maybe 5 chapters left. But everything is certainly coming to a close though I still can't believe I got past chapter 1 in terms of updating and writing! I hope you enjoy. Leave some comments, feedback, reviews, anything. Really, write anything to keep me sane while I drown in school. 
> 
> Thank you so much for your patience, your support and your overall kindness! 
> 
> And this is random, but if you ever want to chat about the story or about anything else, you can find me on animanga tumblr (kytsunee) or my personal tumblr (aesopeau). Okay, love you lots!

There was a song, wasn’t there asking what if God was human. Makoto remembered recalled a Russian philosopher too who asked the same question. What if God was among humans, what if God was human himself? What would he say? What would the world sound like?

 

God among humans.

 

Charging. Clear. Silence.

 

God as human.

 

Charging. Clear. Silence.

 

What would he say?

 

Charging. Clear. Sil—“We got a pulse!”

 

Makoto’s fingers felt the gentle throb of pulse underneath his fingertips. Soft and slow, barely there, but there nonetheless. Thump. Thump. Thump. Relief washed over his face as they quickly pulled up the stretcher and rushed it to the opened truck. Starting a heart again, that was a God-like thing to do, wasn’t it?

 

Sirens slashed the bustling sounds of the streets, the red illuminated the darkness of the night. The EKG machine beeped steadily. Makoto talked because he always did, to the patients, to the space of the back of the truck, to Daiki who was driving and would throw in a comment or two as he maneuvered through the traffic with ease.

 

“BP is 140 over 90.” Makoto said to no one, to everyone, to the sanity of his mind as he scratched the numbers into the sheet. He pulled a small flashlight from out of his shirt pocket and lifted the man’s eyes, they were green and beautiful. But the light shone on them and nothing happened. “Pupils aren’t dilating.” Slowly and slowly, he shouted facts, numbers, things he was doing or was going to do. He said this, said all of this to keep his mind from concentrating on the crinkles on the corners of his eyes or the cracks of his lips, or the snow of his hair. He shouted all this to stop his imagination from wandering to where he was found, in the dark alley, alone, only found by a passerby who tripped on a foot protruding out to the sidewalk, who tripped and saw the body clutching his chest, clutching his chest but nowhere close to holding onto his heart.

 

Alone.

No identity.

A John Doe.

 

And here he and Daiki were, playing God in the graveyard hours of the night, resurrecting the heart again, trying to reach the man that lived in this body to resurface from the warmth of death. _I’m not going to let you die._ He would repeat in the space of his mind, watched as the oxygen mask fog up and clear rhythmically.

 

The John was handed to the nurses with the same deftness and quickness as Makoto and Daiki used the defibrulator after normal procedure failed. The John with the unresponsive eyes were handed over to people who stripped him bare and slipped on a hospital gown, who stuck IVs in him and began to stabilize him.

 

Makoto stopped playing God and let the doctors and nurses take over.

 

As he stood with hands in his pockets, Makoto continued to watch the huddle of blue scrubs and a glimpse of a white doctor’s coat. Eventually they pulled the curtain, as they always did. Eventually, Daiki’s firm hand was on his shoulders again by the time he was about to sigh and a hand would be there, ready to catch the air that escaped his lips. Ready, always there. Catching his happiness.

 

Daiki gave him a cheeky grin, cocking his head to the side. “What are you going to do without me around to catch these?” He waved a balled up fist in front of Makoto’s face, shaking as if the sigh rattled in the cage of his palm. “I have over 3 years worth of happiness in these hands.” His brows furrowed, but the attempt of seriousness failed as his lips eased into a lift again.

 

“Three years,” Makoto repeated as he turned his head away from staring at the blue woven cubicle curtain. Their shoes squeaked as they pivoted on the wax floor and headed back to the van. “Ema-chan is three years old now, isn’t she?”

 

His partner’s smile grew wider, stretching from ear to ear. His hazel eyes gave off a glint of an unreachable warmth and happiness—one that was certainly not shared three years ago when they first met.

 

“Ema and Koyo,” he clarified, though it didn’t phase his cheerfulness.

 

Daiki closed his eyes as he tilted his head back, probably picturing the two twins, their round faces, their baby teeth smiles, the dimples that were more visible when they laughed—and only Daiki could make them really laugh. Fatherhood had made him kind, Makoto thought remembering the sneer he was greeted with the first day on the job. He remembered arms crossed firmly against his body as he stood with his back against the white ambulance. He eyed Makoto as a threat, a stranger replacing the seat of his former partner who retired just two months ago. Stuck with a rookie.

 

Makoto smiled to himself as he looked down, remembering the first words that were ever said to him, “Look Tachi-whatever, I do my job, you do yours and we keep people alive. Don’t fuck up.” 

 

“It’s Tachibana,” the young and fresh out of school Makoto corrected, embarrassed and nervous at the man that stared at him with eyes that had colors bursting within them. Colors reminiscent of leaves throughout the year: a soft green, a dark brown, bursts of gold around black. He thought he saw a twitch of a smile wanting to cross that grimace off. But Daiki’s anger back then was resolute, unwavering and distant.

 

It was the birth of the twins, the sleepless days and equally sleepless nights that broke down the walls. It was the story of Ren and Ran back in Iwatobi. It was the time the babies were lulled into a miraculous slumber when Minako, Daiki’s wife, came to visit with the crying newborns.

 

“Tachi, come live with us.”

 

And that was how it all began.

That was when it stopped snowing that cold Russian blizzard in his dreams too. And that was when the snow rabbit appeared, perfectly formed and shaped—Makoto only smoothed the edges and positioned the eyes. It never said a word, but he knew if it could, it would call him Tachi.

 

 

 

 

 

They sat at the window booth at the diner on the corner of 4th and 2nd street. Daiki quickly shoved and slurped up noodles, his dinner and breakfast for the days they straddled. Not yet yesterday, not yet tomorrow. Nothing close to today. Makoto drank the black coffee he ordered, not strong enough, not sweet enough, nothing like the cup of black coffee that Sousuke made at home. He stared down at the dark brown liquid, watched the steam rise and caress his face with the same gentle touch as Sousuke’s fingers, touching but not really, fluttering and afraid. He smiled as he thought of the man in the bed, sleeping and dreaming, filling the space from wall to wall the sound of soft breathing.

 

“You’ve changed.” Daiki’s voice made the picture in his mind shudder and shake to a stop. The room, the man all silent and still. Quiet. Makoto looked up to see his partner’s elbows propped on the table, his hands interlocked with one another and his chin resting on the bridge they formed. He stared, the golden hue in his eyes sweeping over him. “You’ve found someone, haven’t you?”

 

Found someone. _No, that wasn’t right._ He wanted to say. _Sousuke found me._ _Found me under years of sleet of ice and soft white snow._ But shyness had sewed up Makoto’s lips, had dusted lightly its red tint on his cheeks and on the tips of his ears, and had made his eyes glance back down at the white coffee cup in his hands. He nodded quickly like a high school boy whose crush had just been found out, wanting the truth out there but not finding the voice to say.

 

“I had that look too, still do whenever I’m with Minako,” Daiki said as he leaned back into the booth, his arms folded behind his head. He smiled, that wistful smile. The smile of someone fond of love’s company.

 

How many years had they been together? Ten? Perhaps more? High school sweethearts that didn’t truly become sweet until their second year in college. It hit them fast and hard, Daiki had said before. Sometimes, Makoto forgot that Daiki was just a year older than him. Married, kids. He had a good life. A life good enough for him to smile and catch other’s happiness in his fists to return to them.

 

Makoto glanced up again when Daiki began to speak, “This person you’re with, they make you happy?”

 

He nodded again.

 

‘Good,” he said. “Good.” The word repeated with the soft smile of a parent, a brother, a partner, a snow rabbit that saved him in the lonely urban city filled with people but not family, people but not friends. “You look happier. Sigh less too.” Daiki laughed softly breathless. “I was worried I would be following you forever catching all those sighs.”

 

Finally, the soft smile broke back into that wide grin. “I’m going to want to see her. Bring her round with the twins’ birthday next week. We’ll make it big. I’ll even cook!”

 

This prompted Makoto to laugh as he shook his head. The cold of the season began to thaw. “Please just let Minako-chan cook, Daiki. Don’t make your children suffer.”

 

“Bring your girlfriend over. I bet you she’ll disagree. It’s always good to have a non-biased third person’s opinion.”

 

Makoto shook his head. “Nothing would change.”

 

“Still, I want to see who this new girlfriend is. Bring her, okay?”

 

He was prepared to say no, make some sort of excuse for Sousuke, but the sudden high pitch of the walkie-talkie interrupted him. “10 year old boy, severe anaphylactic shock on the cross section of 13th and 27th street.”

 

Quickly they got up. Daiki fished into his navy trooper cargo pants and got out a few bills and change that would cover the meal. Makoto already scooted out of his seat and was standing at the edge of the table. “That’s pretty close to here.” He was already pushing the entrance door open; the chime that hung rang as it opened. Daiki slipped on his jacket as he defended him from the chilly breeze.

 

The streets were empty even though they were just a few down from the main road. The street lamps illuminated the dark sidewalks and barely reached into the roads. If they strained their ears, the sounds of laughter and clubs and the nightlife of Tokyo thumped to whatever music blasted.

 

The two started to cross the street to the parked ambulance van. Makoto began to zip up his bomber jacket and Daiki pressed the button on the walkie-talkie to respond.  “Dispatch, this is 664. We’re on 4th and 2nd now. We’ll take up--”

 

They didn’t look. That’s what happened. The light of the streetlamps didn’t reach the middle of the street, the darkest (but not too dark) area of the road. They didn’t look. And when they did, it was too late. The headlights were already upon them. Bones shattered against steel frame. Bodies thrown god knows how many feet in the air and landing on the cement. It was dark. They did not look.

 

Static. “664? Hello, 664? Do you copy?” Static.

 

Makoto’s eyes could only open to small slits. The pain seared through him and did not stop. It burned like being in the cold without proper clothes, like placing flesh against flame. It hurt and did not stop. His green eyes searched for his partner in the darkness, search for the white rabbit in the white snow. He saw the scratched up face that was an arm’s length away. He tried calling out, but his voice only shouted in his head. His mouth would not move, could not move. It hurt and did not stop.

 

The crunch of the shoes echoed in his ear. Help. Help was here. Help was coming. Makoto felt relief wash over him, a towel soothing over open wounds. But his chest seized in tightness when he felt his head being lifted off from the rough paved road by his a firm grasp of his hair. His mouth gaped open and close, a fish out of water. He shifted his eyes to the side, tried to see what he could through those slits. He saw men in suits tailored to them like uniform. One—the man holding his hair firmly--had a dragon tattoo wrap around his neck, its head with a wide mouth resting at the base of his neck, under his Adam’s apple. The other had a scar that ran from the end of his right brow down to the right corner of his lip, a knife wound if he recognized the healing line well enough. The man with the scar clicked his tongue, flicking the toothpick in his mouth as he spoke.

 

“This him?” he asked.

 

They knew him?

 

“That’s him. Yamazaki’s bitch,” the other said with disgust in his voice.

 

They knew him.

 

“Fuck, wouldn’t have known he was a fag. How’d he get into Samezuka?”

 

Samezuka. He had heard that before. Samezuka. Samezuka. Samezuka. _The ones you don’t hear of. Aren’t they the most dangerous kind?_

 

“Maybe he fucked Mikoshiba too. That’s why they’re so close and now they’re going to fuck the entire org over.”

 

“You think? Fuck those assholes.”

 

“They even killed Ieyasu, you know?”

 

Ieyasu Takegawa. 29 years old. Had a sister in Kyoto. Body was cremated.

 

“Shit, you serious? I’ll shove my gun up their fucking ass and pull the trigger next time I see them. Was it Mikoshiba?”

 

“No, it was Yamazaki. And this bitch here,” his head was lifted higher, the follicles of his hair was beginning to loosen its hold on his scalp. “Works at the hospital Ieysau was. How much you want to bet that he had this one kill him?”

 

 

 

“Sousuke,” his voice said without the permission of his mind. He called out to the man who sat in the tree and looked down on him, never offering a hand to bring him up. Always letting him stay in the cold ground of the dream world.

 

Maybe it was a hallucination. Maybe Sousuke really stood there behind them, watching over the dragon man’s shoulder, looking down at him.

 

“Look, now the homo’s calling for him. Disgusting.” Makoto’s cheek crashed to the hard and rough textured road again. Now all he saw were shoes, black and polished, reflecting the lights of the lamps. “You think he gives good head?”

 

“What the fuck, man? You a fag now too?”

 

“Fuck no. But it’d be close to fucking that dick Yamazaki over.”

 

Makoto felt a heel dig into the small of his lower back. There was pain, but his whole body was in pain. It hurt and it didn’t stop. His mouth parted and let out a groan. His voice rumbled in the back of his throat.

 

“Well I ain’t letting my dick go nowhere near the guy. I don’t want whatever diseases he has.”

 

Another shoe kicked him swift against his spine. He coughed and his body felt numb now, but the pain was there, throbbing in his mind, in his heart, in the crumbling home of a cage of a body of a man.

 

“Makoto,” the raspy voice called from the lump of a body beside him. Daiki’s eyes slowly opened, his mouth opened as he took in air, his tongue licked his lips, dry and cracked and bloody from being split. “Who the hell are you guys?” his voice grew stronger as he began to prop himself up.

 

“That’s none of your fucking business.” One of them said. He didn’t know which. They were all the same. They all sounded like Sousuke.

 

Daiki’s eyes shifted to the walkie that was beside him. He scrambled to get it, his hands scraping against the road.

 

Static. “664, do you copy? We are sending a response team to you. 664?” Static.

 

What if God was human?

What would he say?

Help me? Save me?

Tell them, I love them?

Goodbye?

 

“Let’s send Yamazaki a message.”

 

Two shots.

Bang.

Bang. 

 

664, do you copy?

Are you hurt?


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This might be familiar to you.
> 
> 1939—Germany invaded Poland; France declared war.
> 
> 1941—Japanese planes attacked a U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
> 
> 1945—Western Allies invaded Germany and was defeated.
> 
> 1945—Americans dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
> 
>  
> 
> This might be familiar to him.
> 
> 1939—Grandpa and Grandma got married. They met 4 years before this.
> 
> 1940—Yui Kimiyama was born. Well, that was her name, but he knew her as mom.
> 
> 1942—Soldiers. War. Propaganda. Gossip. She was a child. She did not remember those trivial days. That’s what she said. That’s the story familiar to him.
> 
> 1945—The bomb. The burning snow. The scars of winter at the end of summer.
> 
>  
> 
> This is where the story will begin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is basically a stand alonesque chapter. I was most excited to write this chapter simply because well, I love giving more sad backstory to an already sad protagonist. Though the outline of the story came out better in my head, hopefully it translated onto the page. I honestly hope you enjoy this. Sorry if it seems there's a lot of time skips in this chapter specifically. I just wanted to get the crucial points down. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy reading this, though. Comments and feedback and reviews would be great! Anything you want to say about the story so far, I'd be more than willing to read! So, yeah! Have "fun" haha

This might be familiar to you.

1939—Germany invaded Poland; France declared war.

1941—Japanese planes attacked a U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

1945—Western Allies invaded Germany and was defeated.

1945—Americans dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

 

This might be familiar to him.

1939—Grandpa and Grandma got married. They met 4 years before this.

1940—Yui Kimiyama was born. Well, that was her name, but he knew her as mom.

1942—Soldiers. War. Propaganda. Gossip. She was a child. She did not remember those trivial days. That’s what she said. That’s the story familiar to him.

1945—The bomb. The burning snow. The scars of winter at the end of summer.

 

This is where the story will begin.

 

Yui Kimiyama was five. Five with eyes the colors of foreign seas, once sparkling and glittering and crinkling at the edge as she smiled that renowned smile—gentle, kind and very rare. She stood in the park, once was a park, was a park when she was standing there at that moment in time at least. Her eyes were wide as she watched it drop, a god from heaven that fell and brought the clouds with him as he hit the hurt. A plume of white smoke rose, and stretched out as it got higher.

 

First, there was the thunder, the boom. It was loud it rang in her ears, like thousands of chimes ringing at once until the endless sound turned to silence. The silence made her ears ache and if she had reached up, reached to touch near her earlobe and felt something sticky on her skin and pulled her hand back to her eyes, she might’ve seen the blood that dripped.

 

Of course, was that her blood or her mother’s? The taller woman draped half of herself, shielding her child, but barely. Her clothes began to burn, disintegrate in the air like the bare branches of the trees in the park did. The ash was swept up in the wind. The wind made from the falling god or the wind that would have come anyways?

 

“Close your eyes, baby. Close your eyes,” her father whispered, crumpled at her feet. The glasses he wore were shattered, his eyes red from the chemical dust.

 

She didn’t realize she was crying until she did as her father said and closed them. Yui felt salty tears slip into her mouth now hot with saliva. Her heart burst inside the cage of her chest as she tried to breathe. For a moment, they were bugs stuck in amber, frozen in time, forgotten by it after it had brought its destruction. But, eventually, sound returned because sound was the first thing that was made, wasn’t it? in the beginning, there was the word.

 

A word spoken.

 

A sound uttered in the void.

 

The sound of screams pierced this void, broke the amber that fell upon her. It was her own scream, her own voice. She had brought back time and brought back the pain. She had opened her eyes, the eyes of foreign seas. Yui tilted her head up because maybe someone would hear better that way, the wail of a child. And that’s when she saw it, the black snow, falling and burning and rotting as it fell. The world was ending in ice and fire. It burned and it froze. The soil would never be the same. The people never the same. She had the scars to prove it, the arm and the chest her mother failed to shield, the welts and the scars that ran along her left forearm and curved along her clavicle and the burn of the little boy god that cupped her child chest that consumed half of her body.

 

An emergency response team found her, half of her shirt gone with swollen red eyes and the festering wound.

 

The snow continued to burn her, even when she closed her eyes.

 

 

Did you know? It takes twenty years for one to see progress to any change? Twenty years, where was Yui Kimiyama? She became a receptionist for a local doctor’s office. She smiled polite smiles and wore sweaters to cover the dusty red scar that draped itself on half of her body. She lived a life of routine. She kept to herself, met end’s meet, and frequented a ramen shop around the corner of the street.

 

It was six years after that when the change began.

 

His name was Akhito, Akhito Yamazaki. He had droopy eyes, she remembered because it made his smiles look bittersweet. He was the only one who talked to her when she came in to eat. He was always on break whenever she came around, though she wondered if he was beginning to time when to get off work.

 

“What’s your name?” he asked, his voice was sweet, an unfamiliar warmth she had long forgotten since childhood.

 

She was surprised at the sudden interest. Yui stared at the man for quite a while until she found her voice again. “Kimiyama,” she said, placing the chopsticks tenderly on top of the ceramic bowl.

 

“Kimiyama,” he said slowly, “first name?”

 

“You don’t need to know my first name.”

 

“What if I want to call you by it one day?”

 

The steady weight of his eyes upon her made Yui turn her head away to let her thick black hair fall from her shoulder and hide her blush that was rising from her cheeks. It was almost as red as the scar that the little boy god left behind, who claimed half of her life already.

 

“Yui,” she finally answered.

 

“Yui. Yui,” he repeated the name until he was satisfied, and even then, his tongue wanted to repeat it more and more. “Yui, that’s a lovely name.”

 

He said her name, breathless and tender. His voice cradled the life held within it. The softness reminded of her childhood, of gentle hands that picked her up and swung her around and kissed her plump child cheeks. _Yui, close your eyes, baby. Close your eyes, you’ll never see that again. We promise._ Akhito’s voice, repeating her name, made her close her eyes, relish the gentleness of the sound like she once heard it in a life snatched away from her, but memories that still lingered in this new shell.

 

Within a year, they started dating. Within two, Yui had slipped off her sweaters and long sleeves and stood there in the middle of his room with the bright lights shining down on her skin, her scars and her welts left behind. She stood between his legs as he sat on the edge of his bed. His brown eyes, the color of rich earth and warm oak, widened at the sight, surprised of the monstrous imprint.

 

“What happened?” he asked. His fingers twitched, tempted to moved, tempted to touch but he kept his grip on the bed sheets.

 

“The snow burned me. A god left a scar behind,” she answered.

 

He didn’t say anything for a moment that felt too long. She was prepared to grab the sweater beside him, but he stopped her. He reached out and gripped her forearm at the edge where the scar began.

 

“Don’t,” he said. “Don’t. I think…I think it’s beautiful.” His eyes swept up to her face. His other hand reached up and cupped her cheek, his thumb smoothing over tears she didn’t realize fell from her eyes. He gently tugged the shredded arm to his lips. Akhito kissed each and every part of it, all the bumps and ridges. He kissed her, all of her, even reaching the child still frozen in that amber.

 

“Do you want me to protect you from the snow?”

 

“No,” she said. She didn’t want to live in fear anymore. “Teach me how to love winter again.”

 

Slowly and surely, he did. Each step with Akhito was like being fed small cubes of ice on a hot day, given ice on cold days, given ice to keep in her mouth until it melted into water and wiped away the lingering black and rotting ash inside herself.

 

Five years into their relationship, they were married. And by six, they had a child, a son, a boy named Sousuke who inherited Akhito’s droopy eyes, the eyes she fell in love with from the start—whenever that start was. Sousuke grew to smile, the smile reaching from ear to ear. His skin was white and smooth, like the first snow of the season. She loved him, loved the flower of winter that she cradled in her arms.

 

These are the days that are nothing but familiar to him.

 

Sousuke Yamazaki was eight. He was drawing and scribbling in books left open for him. The faucet ran as his mother rinsed and chopped up the carrots for the beef stew simmering on the stove. Occasionally, he would glance over at the kitchen and watch his mother’s shoulders move and her hair tied up into a ponytail swish back and forth as she sang songs unfamiliar to him. She wore a sleeveless shirt today, which meant he could see the red mark that stretched from her shoulder down to her forearm.

 

He had once asked his mother what that was. His father called it her armor left behind by a god. Sousuke stared at the uneven skin, he let his fingers run along them, feeling the rise and fall of each ridge under his fingers. It didn’t feel as smooth as armor, he had answered back.

 

“A dented armor means one has fought and survived a battle. Your mother is a survivor.”

 

And the armor was in his sight again. His mother had fought and lived. It was beautiful, like wings draping down her arm. Sousuke turned back to the pages of his doodles and began to draw her form and figure, colored in where the scar would be.

 

He shouldn’t have let her out of his sight, shouldn’t have turned back to color the skin on the pages, because that was when he lost her, when the world turned black, when thunder hit him and silenced him.

 

He heard the shift of wood and felt a heavy weight fall on top of him. Water dripped onto his face and he opened his eyes. Small rays of light slipped in, but it was otherwise dark. He coughed as he breathed in the smoke. Fire crackled as it continued to eat away the wood of the house.

 

“Sousuke,” his mother whispered. Her cracked lips brushed against his ear. “You’re going to be okay. The snow won’t burn you, baby. It’s okay.” Her voice cracked and echoed softly. He never got to say goodbye. And he slipped into the darkness again, the cold and lonely place, the beginning of his dreams.

 

He was eight.

 

No one knew what happened, except there was a boy who survived under the burning rubble, protected by a woman with a scar from decades ago.

 

He was eight.

 

He wore a black suit and stood beside the portrait of his parents.

 

People were there. They stared and gave him pitied looks. Just the emptiness by his side alone made him want to cry and he did.

 

“What do we do with the boy?” they whispered.

 

“I can’t take him. We don’t have the room.”

 

“We don’t have the money.”

 

“Oh, my children probably won’t get along with him.”

 

All he heard were excuses. All he heard were burdens he would become. Sousuke lowered his gaze to the floor, drowned out their voices with the voices of ghosts, things his mother would say, _You bloomed in the winter, did you know that_? Or things his father would say, _You and me, we’re going to have to smile more or else people will think we’re always sad even if we’re not_. Voices he would never hear again. He wondered how well his heart will remember their tones, their inflections, the laughter laced in their words.

 

Shoes crunched against the gravel of the road. Sousuke by instinct bowed with his head low. But, the person crouched down to his level and lifted his head. He stared back at his father’s eyes, but not his father’s eyes. They drooped but there were more lines, harsher lines at the corners. The man’s hair was slicked to the side and he wore a suit that looked too fine compared to all the ones he saw others wore today. A slender woman stood by him. She did not have mother’s eyes, not the same calm waters of ocean waves. But they were almond shaped and kind.

 

“My, Sousuke-kun, you’ve grown to be so big,” the man said, his hands held Sousuke by his shoulders. “Do you remember me?”

 

Sousuke shook his head.

 

“Of course not.” He laughed. It sounded like father’s laugh. “You were only two. Of course you wouldn’t remember me. I’m your uncle, Sousuke. This is your aunt, my wife.” Sousuke’s eyes flickered to the woman then back to man who looked like his father but wasn’t his father. “We want you to be apart of our family. How would you like to live with us?”

 

Did he have a choice? The man made it seem like he did. As if no was an option on the table. As if he could be asked to sleep in the casket with the burned bodies, bodies forged with armor, his mother complete from head to toe now.

 

In the end, he nodded because what else could he have done.

 

Kazuko Yamazaki was three years older than his father. He was a vice president of a large firm and owned his own home in Tokyo, just a 45 minute drive from Sousuke’s old home, yet he never came to visit as conveniently close as he was to them. He was always busy, he said, his job demanded a lot from him. Yet, it didn’t seem that way as he cruised around the streets, taking the long way whenever he could to flash off his polished Bentley.

 

His wife, Haruna, was a Classics professor at Tokyo University. She taught from Asian to Western literature, sometimes emphasizing in folktales and mythologies. Sousuke learned she was cultured in the arts. Her study was filled with books from the floor to ceiling, an art piece in itself when one stepped into the room.

 

“When you’re older and you have a home of your own, I’ll let you have all of them. I promise,” she said with a smile, ruffling through his hair.

 

She only taught two days out of the week and stayed home most of the time either in her room, writing papers, grading papers or reading. But, without fail, she’d hum songs as she walked to and fro. Sousuke would catch it in fragments whenever she passed by him.

 

He asked her what she was singing. It sounded nice.

 

“Oh,” she said, “There’s this French composer…” And she would tell him about this French man’s life, his journey, tell him about the scribbles he made in his margins. Words no one knew except for himself and the notes of the pages, the shudder of the instruments and the harmony of the sounds.

 

Kazuko became a ghost in the house, leaving a lingering scent of cologne by the door or a coat hanging on the chair at the dinner table. He was never there, and Sousuke didn’t mind. Haruna was enough with her kind eyes and foreign tales. She tucked him in at night and read him stories, stories of a half-snake woman who fell in love with a scholar, but was sealed into a gourd by a monk after he deemed their love unnatural, claiming the man was bewitched. They had a son too, he found out after reading the story for himself. Haruna told him the story of King Midas who wanted his touch to turn everything into gold. In the end, he turned his daughter to gold too. She told him stories after stories, hummed song after song. She began to fill the fading voices of a woman who called him a flower of the winter and a man who told him to smile or else the world would think he was sad all the time.

 

And Kazuko was never there.

And he didn’t need to be.

 

But whatever Sousuke wished for, whatever peace managed to tuck itself inside the space of his heart, it would always be taken and snatched away. By the end of the second year of high school, Kazuko was laid off from work. The world was spinning with economic recession. Fear flooded the stock market and people killed themselves.

 

Sousuke returned to the sight of the man who had the face of his father but was not his father sitting on the fine leather sofa, drinking bourbon, whiskey and even beer when all the hard liquor was gone. His cologne was replaced with the stench of alcohol seeping out of his pores. The clean shaven face was replaced with stubble, and the wrinkles on his forehead and his eyes grew prominent the more he stayed at home.

 

“Can’t believe they fucking laid me off. _Me_ , and they kept some punk who barely graduated two years ago.” There was no such thing as seniority, not in a modern world. No one respected the old, not one wanted the keep around the obsolete. That was what Kazuko was. That business smile that he splayed on his face disappeared and was replaced with an ever-present sneer.

 

While Kazuko was home, Haruna stopped humming. She spent less time around Sousuke and more time around her husband, catering to his ego and whims. Eventually, those kind eyes grew tired, dulled to the point where she moved out of a daze of routine. She cried more. He hurt her more, fucked her until she was sick. He yelled at her more, stormed out more. Bruises bloomed against her pale skin.

 

“Why are you letting him do this,” Sousuke asked as he swabbed a new wound, stopped more blood from coming out from the cut.

 

She smiled almost in pain as her other hand reached out and ruffled his hair, so long that it brushed his lashes. “Sou-chan, you should get a haircut. You look more handsome with short hair. Shows off your eyes better.” She avoided the conversation, let her silence of the issue linger. For a smart woman, he thought, she was so stupid. Stupid enough that it infuriated him.

 

Haruna eventually began to work more, taking on more classes to teach though the pay raise was meager. Sousuke watched her shrink, her cheeks becoming more hollow, her clothes fitting too loosely, her body growing more and more frail.

 

Slowly, the books in her study began to disappear. You couldn’t keep both a library and a pay for the mortgage and Kazuko’s car payments all at once it seemed. Sousuke wished he had stolen one book as a memento before they all disappeared. Eventually, the art piece of Haruna’s life was gone. All the stories she told, all the ones she remembered were left in the thin threads of her memories.

 

By the beginning of Sousuke's third year, Kazuko made a deal with the devils, though no one knew at the time. All Sousuke saw when he returned home was a lavish dinner spread on the wood table and the return of the salary man’s smile.

 

“Sousuke, my boy, tonight we eat like kings!” He raised his glass of scotch, filled to the brim. The liquid splashed over the edge and spilled over down his arm and onto the table.

 

“What happened?” he asked as he shrugged off his backpack. He pushed back his wet hair after his shower from swim practice.

 

“We have money now.”

 

“Where?”

 

“You’re a kid. You don’t need to worry about that.”

 

Haruna didn’t say a word. She sat with her bony hands clasped on her lap. Her shoulders slumped, tired from the day. Sousuke grew wary as he flickered his gaze from the wife to the husband, a disjointed picture if he had seen any.

 

“We’re going to be fucking dandy from now on.”

 

That was what the man said.

He was a salary man to the core.

Salary men only knew how to lie.

 

Eventually the lie crumbled, like a statue formed of broken pieces glued together by an adhesive too weak to hold up stones.

 

He heard the conversation, muffled from his room, but it was distinct enough for him to hear.

 

“Tell me the truth. Where is it coming from?”

 

“What?”

 

“The money.”

 

“You don’t need to know.”

 

“Yes, I do.”

 

“No, you don’t.”

 

“I do.”

 

“Hey, so long as I’m the man of this fucking house, I’ll take care of it.”

 

“Are you getting it from a loan shark?”

 

Silence.

 

The wooden chair scraped against the floor as it was pushed back.

 

“Oh god, oh god you are.” Haruna laughed, laughed until it faded into her sobs. “Why would you do that? Why didn’t you tell me?”

 

“I don’t need to tell you anything! So long as I bring home the bread, you don’t need to ask questions.”

 

“This is my home too! My home, Sousuke’s home--”

 

“That fucking brat is not part of this home.”

 

“What are you saying?”

 

“He’s not my son. I don’t need to care for him.”

 

“He’s your nephew!”

 

“So?”

 

“You took him in!”

 

“You wanted a child.”

 

“Don’t you put the blame one me, Kazuko!”

 

“It’s the goddamn truth, Haruna.”

 

“You want the truth?”

 

Silence.

 

Neither wanted to hear the truth. The truth that Sousuke was a burden. The truth that Kazuko’s anger was a danger. The truth that for a smart woman, Haruna was quite dumb. The truth that this all could have been stopped if someone had said something sooner.

 

His bones ached from the practice at school. Sousuke massaged his shoulder, rolled it until the muscle loosened. His legs felt like heavy lead as he grew closer and closer to home. No, not home. Just a house he lived in since his home was burned for a reason he didn’t want to look into. But he wouldn’t lie that he saw a glimpse of a new home being formed for the briefest of moments, in the beginning, when Kazuko was still a ghost and not a man, when any note of his presence in the house was his scent.

 

Sousuke unlocked the door. He took off his shoes one at a time.

 

“I’m home,” he greeted.

 

A crash greeted him back. It sounded like glass shattering against a floor. Haruna’s screams echoed in the house too big.

 

“Bitch!” Kazuko yelled. “Give me back that fucking money!”

 

Sousuke quickly ran to the kitchen where the voices shouted. He nearly slipped on the pool of water mixed with blood from the broken flower vase at the small side table. “Haruna-san!” he yelled. But yelling was too late. If only he could have stopped time, froze it before he shouted then, froze it before she turned her head to look over at Sousuke with eyes that used to be kind now only filled with fear. Froze it all before Kazuko’s grip on her hair pulled her head back, and as she turned her head, so did the knife with its silver glint being soaked with a red that turned black the more that came out.

 

His heart lurched. His stomach twisted. Sousuke grabbed the long shard of the broken vase from the floor and ran to Kazuko, plunging it deep from behind, twisting it. Kazuko’s hand dropped the knife with a clatter, and released its grip on Haruna’s twisted brown hair. She slid down to the floor, choking on her blood, her gasps turning to drowning gurgles. Rage seized Sousuke, plucked the first string within him and made him grab the back of Kazuko’s greasy head and slam it down to the corner of the kitchen’s marble island. The blood splattered on him, on his face, on the white button down of his school uniform.

 

He let go when Rage stopped playing its strings. He let go when he saw Haruna’s eyes open and glazed over.

 

Sousuke slid down against the refrigerator doors. He couldn’t cry anymore. He had shed all his tears at the funeral years and years ago. His teal eyes continued to stare at his hands, smeared with blood from tip to wrist. He stared and stared and sat and sat for days. The bodies getting cold beside him.

 

He didn’t even hear the knock at the door, didn’t hear the footsteps enter the home and head towards the kitchen.

 

“Kazu-chan,” a deep male voice called. It grew louder and by the time it reached the kitchen scene, saw the sight, it whistled long and high. “Well, this is a mess. Hey, you!”

 

Sousuke looked up and saw a man with brilliant red hair slicked back, tall and fitted in a black suit with a white button down shirt. He was certainly not a cop. The man walked over, side stepping the pools of blood, probably long dried up by now. “Did you do this?”

 

“I only killed the man,” he mumbled, his voice monotonous and lifeless.

 

“Only killed the man. Ha! Hear that boys?” The redhead man laughed with his words. The others laughed too though they kept their distance from the scene. “Well looks like you and me have bad luck because that dead man owes me a chunk of money and you killed him off before I could collect.”

 

Sousuke muttered a sorry.

 

“You his son?”

 

“No.”

 

“Neighbor?”

 

“No.”

 

“His wife’s lover, maybe.”

 

“No,” Sousuke answered jolting upright at the thought.

 

The redheaded man’s lips eased into a smile. His golden eyes melted over him as he kept his gaze. “What’s your name, kid?”

 

“Yamazaki Sousuke.”

 

“Sou-chan,” the redheaded man said.

 

“Please don’t call me that.” It brought back Haruna’s face, hollowed out, purple, red and bloody, dead beside him. It reminded him of her bony fingers pushing his hair back and smiling though it pained her, telling him to get a haircut so she could see his eyes better.

 

“I’m Mikoshiba Seijuurou.” He kept his gaze steady. “Sorry, Sou-chan, but you have a debt to pay now.”

 

Maybe he saw the coldness in his eyes. The cold from winter creeping in from the time he was eight until now. Maybe his eyes held blizzards in them. Whatever it was, Seijuuro wanted it and took it. Sousuke dropped out of high school. The bodies were disposed, the house bleached down. No one knew what happened to the Yamazakis that lived in a house too big for two. Sousuke cut his hair as he promised Haruna. He got a tattoo soon after, a black armor where his mother once had her scars.

 

 _I’m a survivor_ , he thought. _The most dangerous kind of person out here in the world._

The snow fell as he got into the black car. Seijuurou greeted him with the widest of smiles as he patted his shoulder. “Welcome home, Sou-chan.”

 

The home of liars, and deceivers and murders and people with pasts better left untouched. This was as close to a home as a home could get now.

 

• • •

 

 

The sun flooded in through the curtains that were pushed aside. He stretched and brushed the other side of the bed. He was expecting his hand to fall on a warm body, feel lean muscle under the sheets, see the smooth nape of Makoto’s neck when he opened his eyes. But his hand landed flat onto the blanket and his eyes opened quickly. Makoto’s side was flat and empty—no neck, no body.  _He must still be at the hospital_ , Sousuke thought. He buried himself further into the blanket, wrapping himself in the scent of sweet grass before the rain. If he had looked out to the city as a commander does during a war, he might have seen snow fall on Tokyo, black and burning as it once did with no body to protect him.

Makoto didn’t come home that night, or the day after.

While Sousuke stayed there, Makoto didn’t return at all.

Where did his home go?


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I’m sorry,” the man squinted as he cleared his throat and took off his glasses to wipe the lenses clean before placing them back on the bridge of his slender nose. His green eyes were rimmed red from crying and the bags under his eyes suggested lack of sleep. He smoothed his wrinkled navy button down shirt as he looked back at Sousuke again. “Who are you?”
> 
>  
> 
> His lover, he could have said.
> 
> A stranger your son saved, he could have said.
> 
> The one who led him to this point, he could have said.
> 
>  
> 
> There were so many answers to choose from the list. Sousuke smiled weakly as he tucked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “A friend,” Sousuke chose. “My name is Yamazaki Sousuke. I’m Makoto’s friend.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reception the last chapter had gave me enough motivation to write out chapter 14! So, thank you very much. <3 I really don't have much to say about this chapter except I'm sure you've all been anticipating this moment when Sousuke finally witnesses the consequences of his lies and deception and his line of work. 
> 
> There's about 3-4 chapters left (not sure. i wing it as i write so it could be much longer or shorter than my estimation) so things are really beginning to build up. The next chapter is definitely in Mako's POV, so I hope you're ready for that!
> 
> Anyways, I hope you like this chapter. Comment if you can with feedback, review, or general thoughts. And, I honestly cannot repeat how thankful I am that people are still reading this very longwinded and seemingly never ending fic. I'm sure there are better soumako writers out there with better fics than this one or perhaps could execute this plot better than I can, but I really do appreciate that you guys have decided to stick around until the end, for better or for worse.

“I’m sorry,” the man squinted as he cleared his throat and took off his glasses to wipe the lenses clean before placing them back on the bridge of his slender nose. His green eyes were rimmed red from crying and the bags under his eyes suggested lack of sleep. He smoothed his wrinkled navy button down shirt as he looked back at Sousuke again. “Who are you?”

 

His lover, he could have said.

A stranger your son saved, he could have said.

The one who led him to this point, he could have said.

 

There were so many answers to choose from the list. Sousuke smiled weakly as he tucked his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “A friend,” Sousuke chose. “My name is Yamazaki Sousuke. I’m Makoto’s friend.”

 

The man smiled as he nodded. “Oh, it’s very nice to meet you. I’m Makoto’s father.” Quickly he stepped aside from the doorway. Sousuke for the briefest moment wished he had continued to block his sight. He didn’t want to see what he had done, what the ice of the winter had eaten up and eroded from the only living, breathing thing in his world. But, life has yet to follow through with any of his wishes.

 

Peaks of sunlight filtered in through the parts of the curtains that were not shut all the way. The light dipped down and rose up to the bed and warmed the body on the bed, half covered in the blanket, laying still to the point where Sousuke’s own heart seized with the thought of death and his friendly human hand. But Makoto’s chest rose and fell slowly and the steady mechanical beep of his heartbeat suggested otherwise. His eyes flickered over his face, bruised and battered. Stitches lined his forehead. His eyes remained closed, his mind wandering in his sleep. That’s what he looked like, despite the purple flowers that bloomed against his skin and the jagged needle work that stretched across his temple, Makoto looked like he was sleeping, as he always looked in the bed they shared or back when they sat on the bench together with cups of coffee delicately held in their hands.

 

He’s sleeping, he repeated in his mind.

He’s sleeping, he repeated to his heart.

He’s sleeping, he repeated to the space that held his soul.

 

Sousuke quietly crossed the threshold and gently closed the door behind him. He kept his fingers curled in the slot of the door handle. His chest tightened and the room felt smaller and crowded. The machines took up too much space, Makoto looked too small in that bed, and his father’s presence that returned to his son’s beside seem to take up the space from wall to wall. He couldn’t take a step closer, not yet at least, so he continued to stay by the door.

 

“How,” his voice shook for a moment, “How is he?”

 

With steady eyes, Sousuke watched the plastic of the oxygen mask fog up and clear every few seconds. He continued to follow the rise and fall of his chest, making sure that the beeps he heard were not wrong. Makoto’s father cleared his throat as he placed one hand on his son’s hand, attached to IVs and pulse monitoring tabs and the other in his own pants pocket. He didn’t look at Sousuke as he answered, instead kept his focus steady on his son. His voice trembled as he did, perhaps out of age or fear or fatigue, but as it did, Sousuke realized how old and tired the man must be and now standing in a hospital watching his son suffer, must have been the cruelest sight. “The…um..the doctors said he had a few broken ribs, one managed to puncture his lung and he had a head concussion that caused some major brain swelling. They…um…” The words slipped out of his mind before he could speak. But, he tried his best to form his thoughts and sentences, “He’s…um…they placed him under a medical coma to help with that.” His hands moved in a daze. The lack of sleep was certainly beginning to take its toll.

 

“What happened?”

 

“It was a hit and run or something,” he answered, his forehead creasing with lines that probably had not graced the man’s face in a long while.

 

“Or something?”

 

“H—he got shot. A bullet through his thigh.” The man’s hands shook as he ran through his salt and peppered hair. The gray strands gleamed under the mixture of sunlight and fluorescent strips. “Who would shoot him? What did he do wrong? I just…I just don’t understand.”

 

His eyes lifted from his son and now moved to Sousuke. He could see Makoto’s eyes reflected in the green ones that stared back at him now. Kind eyes, eyes filled with life and hope and looked better smiling with the corners crinkling as he did. It brought back the memories of a faint figures searching for his pulse, of a calm voice that tried to keep him alive though there was nothing living within this body to begin with. Sousuke wondered if these older eyes could see the demon fleshed in human skin, the one that touched his son, poisoned him with every caress and every kiss.

 

Sousuke wanted to tell the man that there was nothing to understand. What led up to this point, to the familiar sounds of a mechanical beep of a heart was a series of ill-fated coincidences that piled on top of one another that seemed similar to the designs of fate. But it was a coincidence that Makoto was the closest dispatch van on call where Sousuke was. It was a coincidence that they ran into each other in the hall that day and Sousuke invited him for his smoke break. It was a coincidence that they met per routine days and weeks and months later. It was a coincidence, every single thing.

 

They were thrown together by coincidences. In the end, they were still strangers. Sousuke was not his lover, not his friend, but a stranger who grew attached and learned nothing at all. That was why he made his way to the hospital that morning, planning on heading to the paramedic lot to see if Makoto was around or perhaps in the break room, sleeping the days off if there was a major crunch since it had happened a few times before. But, he was not out where the lot was, the mahjong players had deserted their tables too. The break room had a few ER nurses taking their 10 minute naps during their long shifts.

 

Sousuke’s brows had furrowed as he looked down the halls and watched life move as it always did. He approached the information desk, asked whether or not Makoto Tachibana was on call and the woman at the desk nodded with an odd sadness to her movements. She lifted her finger and pointed to the room two doors down from them.

 

They were a bundled pair of coincidences.

Sousuke would have not known.

Makoto would have kept on sleeping, alone.

 

“Is it just you here?” Sousuke asked, dropping the topic all together. If he spoke more about it, asked about the gunshot, the hit and run, how long Makoto was alone in this hospital bed before he came, before anyone came to fill the loneliness of the room, his father might see him through those tired eyes, see the monster that stood before him, and see how his touch had eroded his child.

 

Makoto’s father licked his chapped lips, his eyes fixated on his son before moving over to Sousuke again. “No, no. My wife and children are staying at a relative’s house nearby. We didn’t want to leave him alone, so I decided to stay.”

 

“You should go home and sleep.”

 

“Oh no, I’m fine. I can sleep in the chair,” he said as he motioned to the chair besides the bed. Blankets draped and a pillow balanced haphazardly in the crook of the back and the metal armrest.

 

“Please, go sleep. I’m sure Makoto wouldn’t want you to worry so much about him like this. I’ll stay and watch over him.”

 

Even unconscious, even while being aided in his breathing, that was the truth. At his core, Makoto would not want anyone to worry about him, he would’ve wanted the world to continue spinning as it always did and leave him alone in that room and letting everyone he knew move through their days blissfully unaware of how many bones that were broken or whether or not the bullet made a clean exit. And his father would have known that best of all.

 

The man paused, his eyes unable to tear themselves away, but his body demanded a bed, and a proper bath and meal. He finally sighed; his shoulders fell as he nodded. “Okay, okay. My cell phone number, I’ll give that to you just in case anything happens. I’ll come back tomorrow. I’m sure you have work and such that you need to do.”

 

“It’s fine. This is the least I could do for him.”

 

After scribbling his number on a torn sheet of paper on the bedside table, Makoto’s father grabbed his jacket, but hesitated by the bed as he stared down. His large hands brushed a few locks of hair away from his son’s closed eyes, his touch lingering on the smooth forehead, before he pulled away, giving a curt nod and smile to Sousuke who finally stepped away from the door and let the man passed.

 

The door rattled as it was pulled closed and a quiet “click” echoed when it was finally shut.

 

What could he say now? What could he do? Sousuke stared at the gentle fall and rise, listened to the steady beep that reminded him of his own visit several months ago, and looked out at the distant view outside, of the life that moved and yet the room here seemed frozen.

 

His boots squeaked against the waxed floor as he took hesitant steps forward. Some part of him believed that Makoto would open his eyes again now that his father was out of the room. But the green eyes of spring continued to remain closed to him. Sousuke’s fingers delicately skimmed on the thin blanket and ran up Makoto’s fingers. His skin was cold and dry. He laced his fingers with Makoto’s as he pulled the chair up to sit.

 

“I’ve read somewhere that coma patients can hear what you say even though they’re not fully awake,” he began speaking. Sousuke’s eyes focused on his thumb that stroked tender circles on the back of Makoto’s hand, warming up the skin section by section. “I don’t know how much that is true. I don’t know if it applies when you’re under a medically induced one or not.” Sousuke’s thumb stopped and he inhaled deep. “But, if you can hear me or maybe…even if you can’t, I know it’s too late, but I’m…” The words couldn’t pass his lips. It got caught in the thick filter of lies he kept in the back of his throat. The apology couldn’t come out. His hand tightened around Makoto’s, gripping it expecting it to flinch from the pain. Nothing happened, just the steady beep.

 

He just wanted to apologize and even then, the man who he came to be could not even give away that much humility.

 

It was the phone ringing, shrill and sharp from his pocket that stirred him. He didn’t even look to see who called. They were all the same, every single one of them. Sousuke reached into his jacket pocket and threw it across the room where it hit the wall with a loud bang and clattered to the floor, shattering the glass touch screen. Makoto didn’t need to hear them, didn’t need to be woken out of his slumber, his peace. He didn’t need to suffer, that’s what Sousuke thought as he stared at the shards and pieces of the broken phone. He knew breaking a phone was not enough. The underground was at war. This was not enough. A soldier couldn’t return home after seeing blood. A captain could not return before the war has ended. Avoidance was not enough. Not for this world.

 

For the next few days, Sousuke continued to stay in the seat, sleep in it, and warm up Makoto’s hand while his parents were not around, a lover who could not be a lover, or perhaps was never a lover in the first place. He should not be thinking so highly of himself. He ate food that the nurses brought and showered in the bathroom inside the room. Sometimes, he would pick out the bomber jacket, still stained rich with Makoto’s blood from that night, that was piled in a plastic bag with all his other clothes and belongings and just hold it up to his nose and take in the scent of rain and spring and of freshness in the dying world.

 

Only his scent lingered now.

And even then, that was fading.

 

He dreamed again. For weeks, he didn’t and now it returned to him. The snow fell gentle and cold onto his hair, his face. Sousuke was wrapped up for once with a warm jacket and a muffler secured around him. But despite the clothes and the scarf, the chill still ate him. It had pierced deep into his bone and no amount of clothing could make him forget. He exhaled and saw his breath leave his lips, slightly blue and chapped. His teal eyes shifted to the tree, expecting flowers to drift down as it always did before. But, the gray world was not saturated with the pink blossoms this time. The tree was rotting. The pink buds on the branches crumpled up and turned a sickly yellow-brown. The petals shriveled and the veins lined the outside of each bud.

 

His fingers reached out to touch the trunk of the tree. But his touch killed it more, the bark peeling back, layer by layer the longer he kept his hands on it. Each smooth layer turned black as it met the cold winds of the season. Death ate and ate it away, hollowing it out before it died. The tree didn’t speak to him and for once, Sousuke wanted to wake up before the silence made his ears bleed.

 

 

 

 

 

The black coffee ran down from the machine into the small paper cup. Some splattered onto his hand, stingingly hot, but he was too tired to brush it away. Sousuke took a slow sip, letting it warm his body as it slipped down his throat into the pit of his stomach that had tasted nothing except caffeine and cigarette ash. He ran his hand through his disheveled hair now, running it down the back of his neck and massaging the tense muscles at his nape.

 

“Boss!”

 

Sousuke turned his head to see the lean man run, the top of his hair flopping as he did. Swiftly, he tossed the cup into the trash bin beside the machine and turned his back on Uozumi. He tried to walk briskly back to the room, towards the end of the hall.

 

“Boss, wait! Where are you going?” Uozumi caught up to him and gripped his shoulder, pulling him back and forcing him to turn around. The hazel green eyes moved quickly over his face, searching for answers before he even asked. What answer did he get when he saw the dark circles under Sousuke’s eyes and the stubble beginning to form and the creases and wrinkles in a shirt he slept in? “I’ve been calling you and looking for you. Where have you been?”

 

“Here,” he answered. Sousuke roughly pulled himself out of Uozumi’s grasp. “You’ve found me. So, leave.”

 

“What is wrong with you, boss? You haven’t been answering your phone or been back at your apartment. Mikoshiba has been at Shark House for days waiting for you to come back. He needs to talk to you and…” Uozumi in a breath caught him up on the things he had missed, or tried to miss. The Samezuka higher ups were getting antsy. There were more drive by shootings in locations where Mikoshiba and his own men were stationed. Ambushes, attacks. Guerilla warfare on the streets of Tokyo. Several of them were arrested, strings pulled through the network of shady cops and shady men who’ve dipped their whole hands in blood and never intended to wash it clean.

 

He didn’t need to hear this, hear the world he dragged Makoto in, learn of the bugs that killed the tree from the roots up. Sousuke finally freed himself from Uozumi’s grasp and briskly walked back to the room. He heard voices talking and he saw the doctor and a few nurses circle the end of the bed. His heart leapt into his throat when he saw those green eyes from the glass slit of the door. They had woken Makoto up.

 

No, he repeated in his mind.

No, he repeated in his heart.

No, he repeated in the empty space that held his soul.

 

Who knew how long Sousuke stood there, standing with Uozumi’s voice becoming a muffled echo as he tried to talk to him. The doctor finally smiled and nodded before opening the door. Sousuke quickly stepped aside for the entourage to leave.

 

He shifted his weight and took a step forward, crossing the threshold. The machine continued to beep, the sun continued to peak through the half closed curtains, Makoto’s body continued to lay in the very bed it had stayed for the past week. It was all the same, except he was awake and his eyes stared up blankly at the ceiling before shifting when it heard the sound of his shoes.

 

Sousuke barely reached the middle of the room and stopped there. Dead roots had wrapped around his legs and forced him to stay there, close and yet far enough from the tree.

 

“Makoto,” he breathed out, unsure of what he should say.

 

The eyes that stared back at him seemed empty, dead. His lids drooped, heavy and tired and still waking out of the drugs that were still in his system. Makoto stared at Sousuke before he turned his head to look at the window, and catch the small glimpse of the city outside.

 

“Your parents were--”

 

“Is it true?” he finally asked, his voice raspy and soft. Sousuke wasn’t allowed to answer before Makoto asked the next question. “Did you kill Ieyasu Takagawa? Are you really part of a yakuza group? How many others have you killed? The boy I tried to save, did you kill him too?” Each question was asked with a monotonous voice, a tired voice, a voice that had repeated these questions before, perhaps in the cavernous echoes of the darkness of his dreams.

 

Sousuke was tired too. Years and years fell upon his shoulders as he stood there, being interrogated and not at the same time. “Yes,” he answered, one enveloping answer to all of them and to the ones in the future. One steady and sure, “Yes.”

 

“They’re turning four next week,” Makoto began. Sousuke wasn’t sure who he was talking about, but he didn’t want to interrupt. “He told me what presents he was getting them. He said he hid them from his wife because he wasn’t sure she’d let him spoil them with the presents. He wanted me to come and he wanted me to invite you too.” Makoto laughed weakly now, his laughter turned into a fit of coughs.

 

Sousuke continued to stand, silent.

 

“They’re only three. He didn’t even get to see them turn four.” Makoto’s voice finally cracked as his lips trembled. He bit down on it to stop the quivering. “I killed him…I killed him.” He brought his arm over and placed it over his eyes. The tears began to slide and slip into his mouth.

 

“Makoto--”

 

“Shut up!” Makoto shouted, his anger bouncing off the hospital walls. “I killed him. Daiki’s dead. Daiki’s dead and it’s all my fault.”

 

His fingers felt the urge to reach out and pull the arm away, kiss the heavy eyes and feel the warmth in his hands again. So, he balled them up into fists and tried to stay where he was.

 

“Leave,” the brunette finally croaked when he managed to stop his cries. “Please...leave.”

 

His eyes fell to the floor, watched the roots of the dead tree twist his ankle and made him turn to face the room’s door again. Sousuke placed his hand in the slot of the door, his head still lowered.

 

Finally, he spoke, “I’m going to make things right for you, Makoto. I promise, I’m going to make it right.”

 

He pulled the door open and stepped out, shutting it firmly behind him. His hand didn’t want to let go of the spring and the warmth he had indulged himself in that lay just inside that room, the spring ravaged by winter and the warmth just a mere hint in flesh that was beginning to freeze over. Sousuke closed his eyes and tilted his head back to rest gently against the sliding door. He took in a deep shaky breath before opening his eyes. Uozumi stood beside him, his brows furrowed as he waited anxiously.

 

“Let’s go, Uozumi.”

 

Sousuke released his grip on the door. His back straightened and with long strides, he walked down the hospital corridor. Each step carried a plan, a strategy to tear down the hive. If Sousuke looked down towards his shoulder, he’d see Death, with his hand firmly gripping it, crooking his head to meet his eyes and smiling a Cheshire smile. It smiled knowing that revenge would be more fruitful if it was carried out by someone with nothing to lose.

 

This would be his final act for Makoto Tachibana, to the tree who lived in the coldest of seasons.

He repeated this to the empty corners that held his soul.


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Makoto Tachibana, on that cool night, tilted his head back and watched as the black sky was not accompanied by the gentle fall of snow. He blinked once, then twice. There were no stars to be seen, and neither was there a cloud in sight. The moon was only a sliver of a cat’s smile distant and high up in the sky. The chill winds wrapped its hands along his throat, cupped his face with frozen lips kissed him from cheek to cheek and spun and twirled away from him. His face was left with the tingling sensation and skin lashed red where the airy mouth touched. Makoto exhaled and saw his breath, white and wispy. It’s cold enough for snow, he thought.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is the first A/N where I don't have much to say really. I hope you like this chapter and I use the sense of the word "like" very loosely. You might not like it because of all the sadness and the pain, but I mean...this whole story is sadness and pain. 
> 
> Comments, reviews, feedback, other thoughts, etc. are VERY welcomed. And, yeah. I hope everyone's having a lovely day. Oh, if you want to listen to something while reading this chapter, I was listening to this playlist while writing (http://8tracks.com/tsarkoshei/hesitation). It's classical music, so if it won't be too distracting while reading. The chapter is shortish (a little less than 3200 words) so you won't go through the whole playlist with this chapter alone, but if you listen to it while reading from beginning to end, that might work. Okay, I thought I wasn't going to say anything here but I just said a bunch, so going to wrap this up and leave you guys to the new chapter.

Makoto Tachibana, on that cool night, tilted his head back and watched as the black sky was not accompanied by the gentle fall of snow. He blinked once, then twice. There were no stars to be seen, and neither was there a cloud in sight. The moon was only a sliver of a cat’s smile distant and high up in the sky. The chill winds wrapped its hands along his throat, cupped his face with frozen lips kissed him from cheek to cheek and spun and twirled away from him. His face was left with the tingling sensation and skin lashed red where the airy mouth touched. Makoto exhaled and saw his breath, white and wispy. It’s cold enough for snow, he thought.

 

“Do you think it’ll snow?”

 

“Maybe,” Makoto answered.

 

“I hope it does.”

 

“Why?”

 

“When it snows, everything stops.”

 

“No it doesn’t.”

 

“Yes it does.” The sound of boots shifted against the crunch of loose rocks and gravel on the paved road. “When it snows, nothing grows. Nothing changes. All you have is a sleet of ice for months and months.”

 

Nothing grows.

Nothing is alive.

Nothing dies.

 

“That’s why you always dream of a world of snow, because nothing can live and nothing can die.”

 

“Being alive is a good thing,” Makoto whispered. His green eyes strained as he continued to stare into the dark void of the starless sky, hoping to find one, any star, any twinkling dot of old and familiar lullabies.

 

Twinkle, twinkle, little star.

How I wonder where you are.

He wondered where they all were now.

The universe’s diamonds were out of sight tonight.

 

“Life is a good thing,” he added on. The words slipped out of his mouth into white smoke.

 

“All life?”

 

“All life.”

 

“Even those of liars?”

 

“Liars don’t lie all the time.”

 

“Even those of thieves?”

 

“Some thieves steal for a good reason.”

 

“What about murderers?”

 

Makoto continued to stare at the black and empty canvas of the sky.

 

“Tachi, I hope you can make it snow again.” The warm and familiar hand rested on top of his head. It ruffled his hair, the strength of wind without the breeze. Makoto felt his head lean into it, longing for the familiar action more and more.

 

His lips tugged into a smile. His voice tinged with laughter, “What am I a god?”

 

“Yes,” another voice whispered with familiar lips resting against his ear and hot breath brushing his face. “Aren’t you a god?”

 

“Tachi, make it snow again,” Daiki’s voice cracked and wavered.

 

It was the sound of the fear in his partner’s voice that made him turn his head. Pressed against his chest, right above his heart, was a barrel of a black and polished gun. Makoto’s hand gripped it, his index rested snuggly on the trigger. His heart began to race, but his hand remained steady.

 

Tears slipped down Daiki’s face. Locks of hair from his usually neat quiff slipped down until it brushed the tips of his lashes. His hazel eyes stared at him, pleading him. His hands held up besides his face, surrendering. Surrendering what?

 

“Surrendering his heart to you. That’s what you like to do, isn’t it? Restarting a heart again.” The warm hands wrapped around the hand that held the gun and rested his finger gently on the trigger too. “Take his heart, Makoto. Take it and start it up again.”

 

“I…I can’t. Daiki, I can’t.” Makoto shook his head, fiercely. He tried to pull away from the man that stood behind him who once gave him warmth but now only gave him the sensation of a world colder than he could ever imagine. The more he struggled, the tighter the grip and the harder the barrel pressed against Daiki’s chest.

 

“Tachi, make it snow,” he said softly, “Make time stop. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die. I don’t want to die.”

 

“Be a god,” Sousuke whispered, kissed the curve of his ear gently before releasing his hand and Makoto found his finger curl and pull the trigger. The blast of the gun echoed with the strength of thunder. Blood splattered onto his clothes, his face. His tongue licked his chapped lips and he tasted something salty and bitter and metallic. He wasn’t sure if he was crying or if he tasted blood.

 

Makoto lifted his head back up again, looked up to catch any stars that might have startled awake. He stared at the sliver of a smile from the grinning moon. It looked like the darkness smiled at him, smiled deviant and proud.

 

And maybe he was crying.

And maybe he tasted Daiki’s blood in his mouth.

 

 

 

The men stood by his bed, one beside him, the other at the foot with hands gripping the footboard. One of them was bald. The other had hair slicked back. They both wore suits, but not matching at least. One was gray the other was wearing navy with red diagonal stripes. Makoto stared at them, listened to their hollow voices like placing a seashell to his ear to hear the ocean waves roar and crash faintly.

 

“Tachibana-san, we realize this is a difficult time for you,” the bald man standing at the foot of the bed said after he cleared his throat. “But you should gain some peace of mind that we are investigating the death of your co-worker, Shidehara Daiki.”

 

Makoto’s voice could not be found so he remained silent.

 

“Can you help us set the scene? What were you two doing before the…incident?”

 

The murder, he wanted to correct but couldn’t find the strength. Makoto’s gaze drifted from the two men, to the window that looked out to the skyscrapers outside, sometimes down to the floor, polished fresh while he slept.

 

“We were eating at the diner,” Makoto said.

 

“On 4th and 2nd, correct?” the man beside him spoke up.

 

“Yes.”

 

“What happened next?”

 

He closed his eyes. The scene unfolded fresh and too vivid and it was like Daiki asking for him to make it snow again. Keep him alive, if anything in this moment, in his guilt. “There was a dispatch call. We were only a few streets away so we decided to take it up. Daiki headed out first and I followed.” A lump formed in his throat as he remembered the street lamps, dim, a sliver of light in the darkness. “We had parked the van across the street so we were heading to it. And a car—we didn’t look before we crossed—it hit us.”

 

“Do you recall what happened after that?”

 

And the faint memory of familiar lips brushed against his ear, whispering words warm and whispering words cold and whispering to him what wanted to teach him from the beginning. How to be human. “No. I don’t know. I’m sorry,” he answered. To be human meant how to lie.

 

In the beginning, there was the word.

In the beginning, God made Adam and Eve.

In the beginning, the fall of humankind began with a lie.

 

“Did you know if he had any enemies? People who might have wanted to hurt or had a grudge against him?”

 

_Let’s send Yamazaki a message._

 

“No,” Makoto replied. His heavy lids opened again. He stared at the gleam of sunlight that slipped into the room. “No, everyone loved him.”

 

“Was he acting strange that day or recently? Any out of the ordinary behavior?”

 

“No, he was perfectly fine.” He was a father to two twin girls who were going to turn four next week. He had bought them dolls, had tucked them in the back of the closet in his room, ready to surprise them. He was going to spoil them because he loved them, because he lived a good life and had love to give and time to catch other’s happiness hidden in their sighs.

 

“Are you sure you don’t remember seeing anything?” The bald man asked. His brows furrowed and he stared almost pleading and helpless, searching for the answer he needed hidden within Makoto’s mind. He watched him shift from the corner of his eye before his gaze moved back to the world outside.

 

He remembered their gruff voices. He remembered a tattoo that wrapped around the man’s neck. Was it a dragon or was it black as ink turned to armor? They were both the same, weren’t they? Dragon or armor, they were both made from black ink, pierced through skin, and didn’t flinch when blood was shed.

 

“I don’t remember,” he whispered, “I’m sorry I don’t remember.”

 

They stood, waiting in silence before the bald detective released his grip on the footboard and the squeaks of shoes echoed. “Thank you for your time, Tachibana-san. Our information cards are on the table if you need to contact us.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Makoto echoed again. He wasn’t sure who he was apologizing to, the men who sought answers and who only heard lies or to the man who wriggled his way into his dream and became a snow rabbit for the sake of company. Whoever it was directed to, Makoto apologized, quietly and with no one to hear.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The days passed with Makoto’s gaze staring at the only three places he could see in the confines of hospital bed. In the morning, it was outside the window. He watched the sun rise, burning up the black night and turning it from violet to a wash of magenta and orange before burning the dark sky clean, tearing it to strips of gentle blue. He’d see the skyscrapers reflect the morning rays and mirror the people who walked the streets below. By afternoon, Makoto turned his head to the opposite side, watching profiles of patients and nurses and co-workers speed by through the small slit of glass on his door. No one looked in to notice that he watched. No one waved a hand or popped their head in to see how he was doing. They didn’t have to. They could probably guess. By night, Makoto’s green eyes were transfixed on the ceiling above. He’d count the pin prick holes of the ceiling, sometimes stare at the fluorescent light strips until he started seeing spots and had to move to shift his gaze to another section of the room.

 

This is how he spent his time in recovery, of course after his parents and Ren and Ran had returned back to Iwatobi. He made them leave as soon as he could, flashing them that familiar smile he had practiced all his life that comforted them and set their minds a bit more at ease. If they had seen him, seen the tired eyes move from one point to another like the phases of the sun, they wouldn’t have left him. They would have demanded him to return home.

 

Maybe he should have, the salty sea air would have done him good, he would think. And then his heart would pound; the monitor would beep shrilly in his ear. And Makoto would be reminded of how there was an empty bed across from him that should have been occupied. There shouldn’t have been one heart beating, there should have been two.

 

Even then, even if the logics of the world could not carry on two lives, the heart that should have been beating…well, it certainly shouldn’t be his.

 

And by the end of the day, when the sun’s light was long gone from sight and the room was pitch black, Makoto would feel a ghost of a hand ruffle his hair as it once did when it was human and solid and still alive. He’d whisper, _I’m sorry_ to the empty room in hopes that it would set the ghost at peace.

 

 

 

 

She had asked him if he wanted to attend the funeral. She sat by his bed with one twin on her lap and the other sat with him, resting on the edge and swinging her short legs. Makoto ran a gentle hand through the thin, curly hair and nodded.

 

He looked over at Minako with her black hair cropped short into a pixie cut and her bright and warm brown eyes tired from the week of planning and arranging. Bags creased under her eyes as she smiled.

 

“Thank you,” she said. “He would’ve wanted you to come.”

 

And wasn’t that a sad line, that Daiki would have known he would die before Makoto.

Perhaps catching his happiness poisoned him with the sadness that lingered in his sighs too.

 

 

 

 

The funeral itself was small, close family and friends. Daiki’s portrait was placed on a stand besides his coffin. Bouquets of flowers rested on top of the polished mahogany. Daiki himself was dressed in a black suit with a black tie. His face was smoothed over with the stillness of sleep, but his closed mouth still held a slight curve of a frown. If Makoto stared long enough, he’d see the slight creases and lines left behind by furrowed brows. Was that how he looked when he died?

 

Makoto sat up straighter in his wheelchair to reach in and take hold of the folded hands clasped on top of his chest. It was hard and cold to the touch. It was frozen and Makoto wondered if the winter of his dreams had done this, chilled his body whole like this. His eyes pricked with tears. He couldn’t apologize. He couldn’t even say goodbye. He couldn’t say any of the things he said before in his dreams, in the emptiness of his hospital room. The words were strangled in his mouth, and Makoto kept silent.

 

During the service Minako cried. The twins cried because their mother cried. Ema buried her face into Makoto’s suit. Her sniffles were muffled and her wispy locks that fell on her face had been pushed to the side, matted with tears and tangled with some saliva that had slipped out.

 

They didn’t know why they were crying.

Not yet, at least.

Not for a long long while.

 

He tilted his head back to look up at the clear blue sky. Cloudless and too bright for stars. For the briefest of moments, a breeze of a thought, he wanted it to snow.

 

 

 

By the third week, Makoto was back home, back in the house that faintly held his scent, that echoed whispers and that rang sweet laughter of forgotten times. Supported with crutches, he picked up the mail that had collected on the floor. Bills, magazines, get well cards from friends who couldn’t come. He piled them all together into a stack and placed it on the corner of his kitchen counter. His eyes flickered to the spare key he usually kept outside under the mat, resting on the countertop next to the cold and half empty coffee pot.

 

Makoto forgot Sousuke slept here the night he went out on call.

 

Everything before felt like ages ago. The hospital was a frozen point in time and being back home, he felt the change, the dust that collected on the tables, the silence of the room now that it was just him again, him and no one else.

 

He headed towards the bedroom, the crutches digging into the pit of his arms and his thigh aching dully. Makoto winced as he eased himself onto the edge of his bed and let his muscles fall into the comforts of the soft sheets and mattress.

 

The apartment echoed Sousuke even though Sousuke was not around, could not have been around for a while. The pillowcases carried his faint scent and a few strands of hair that had fallen out on the side that he slept.

 

Makoto closed his eyes and the walls echoed the deep voice.

 

 _Where are you going?_ The laughter warmed the question. His teal eyes crinkled as he asked and cocked his head to the side.

 

 _Home_ , Makoto had answered.

 

 _Home is this way_ , Sousuke said, grabbing hold of his hand. The hand that pulled Makoto Tachibana in, deeper and deeper until he found Sousuke Yamazaki’s bones to be cozy, the space behind his ribs spacious, and the sound of his heartbeat soothing. The memory squeezed his chest, made his lungs feel constricted. Makoto curled himself in as he lay on the bed. He wished he had never been released, wish he could burn the apartment so Sousuke Yamazaki could not haunt him when he closed his eyes.

 

But he did.

 

 

 

 

 

“Are you sure about this?”

 

He laced and unlaced his fingers as he sat in the chair. He smoothed over his knuckles, pressing down on the skin until they turned white. Makoto Tachibana bit down on his lower lip until he tasted blood and ran his tongue over the chapped skin. “Yes,” he said finally.

 

The captain of the paramedic department furrowed her brows. Her pink lips twisted as her brows knit together with concern. “I understand the loss of Daiki has been hard on you, but don’t you think this is a bit rash? You can always take a break and return--”

 

He straightened in the wooden chair. “I can’t…” he paused to breathe. “I can’t do this anymore.” Makoto looked up, flashing the weak and trembling smile. It fell a few times as he tried to keep it up. “My hands keep shaking and I can’t concentrate anymore. I don’t think…I don’t think that’s something that will change and it’s not something a medic can have.”

 

“You were a good one,” she said with a heavy sigh. Her shoulders slumped as she fell back into her chair. “You and Daiki, you were my best.”

 

The lump formed in his throat again. His lungs felt like they were being squeezed. His fingers quickly fumbled for the walkie talkie he tucked in his jeans pocket and placed it on top of the uniform as he handed it to her over the desk. “I washed it,” he said as he slowly stood up.

 

Her knobby fingers pulled the bomber jacket from underneath. She held it out and looked at it before folding it and handing it back. “Keep this,” she said.

 

Makoto’s green eyes grew wide. “I can’t.”

 

“Quitting or not, you’re still a part of the family.” She flicked her wrist, shoving it towards him. “Keep it. It’s my gift to you.”

 

He stared at the navy blue jacket, and the gold stitches on the path, a snake circling a rod. Makoto always saw it as an odd symbol for the medical field. Poisonous creatures for a practice meant to heal. His fingers shook before he took it. Makoto thanked her before he said goodbye and walked out of the office with the jacket brushing the ground.

 

It was cold as he stepped out of the hospital building. He tilted his head back and looked up at the gray skies, prime for rain but not a single drop falling yet. He exhaled and saw his breath, white wisps against the open space.

 

He wished for once that it would snow.

But he knew it wouldn’t, it never did.

So, Makoto Tachibana walked home, dragging the jacket behind him.


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Makoto Tachibana, for days, laid in his bed, purged his heart and his soul with tears. When his body had learned how to cry, it could not stop. His eyes found comfort in the stinging pain and the gentle throb of his heart behind his eyes. He squeezed them shut, curled into himself more and didn’t let go. His thigh where the bullet wound was ached. And when it ached, Makoto would fumble for the medication on the nightstand and take one pill without water because his body felt too heavy to even move.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoy this chapter. Comments, reviews, feedback, all your thoughts are desired and appreciated! Yeah, I really don't have anything to say this time.

Makoto Tachibana, for days, laid in his bed, purged his heart and his soul with tears. When his body had learned how to cry, it could not stop. His eyes found comfort in the stinging pain and the gentle throb of his heart behind his eyes. He squeezed them shut, curled into himself more and didn’t let go. His thigh where the bullet wound was ached. And when it ached, Makoto would fumble for the medication on the nightstand and take one pill without water because his body felt too heavy to even move.

 

Makoto Tachibana laid in his bed, listened to the scatter rainfall and the brief honking of cars, and students laughing or whining as they walked back home. His ears listened and sometimes, he could hear faint thunder that was not thunder, but an explosion of a spark and gunpowder. He could hear the sound echo until the pitch was so loud it became silence and numbed his ears. He would pull the covers over his head in hopes that the sheets would form a buffer to the sounds. He hoped, hoped for a lot of things, hoped and watch them all trickle out of the crevices of his fingers and fall to the earth, crushed, swept and carried away.

 

Makoto Tachibana laid in his bed, and let his mind consume him for the weeks that passed. He lived in moments that could not be returned. He closed his eyes and pictured the warmth once discovered in his apartment, with faint laughter and sweet kisses. He would live in soft hands that ran through his hair, rustling it like the eastern wind. He lived the moments all in his mind until he slept and woke up to live through them again.

 

His cheeks began to sink; his clothes draped loose on his body, enough to fit another person in him. Makoto Tachibana crumbled, what else was there to say?

 

 

 

 

 

The pots clanged together. The clinks of the silverware being pushed around echoed. The sounds in the kitchen drifted into the room, reaching Makoto’s ears and stirring him awake. Light peaked through from underneath the door. His breath hitched, a dragon’s head at the base of a man’s throat flitted through his head, a flickering image that haunted him. Makoto swallowed the lump that formed in his throat. He strained to lift himself off the bed, but finally did. The dull ache in his thigh returned, but fear had made him forget to reach out and take another painkiller.

 

His arm extended and he took hold of the crutches and brought himself up again. He hopped and hobbled as he tried to quietly reach for the door.

 

The closer he got, the stronger the scent of eggs being cooked. His palm grew sweaty as he took a grip of the doorknob, missing it a few times and brushing his fingers against the wood of the door until he found it. Slowly, Makoto opened it and the light of the living room flooded in. He had to squint to get himself readjusted to the brightness.

 

He saw a tall and wide back standing by the stove, stirring the scrambled eggs in the pan.

 

“Sousuke?" he called out, his voice cracked after not speaking in so long.

 

The man who stood in the kitchen did not turn. Instead, he bobbed his head to a tune Makoto could not hear and continued stirring the eggs. Makoto stood, hunched on his crutches as he stared, afraid to move any closer. His eyes trailed down the smooth dark hair, the slight tanned skin, and then moved over to the lean shoulders of a lean body. He wore a dark navy t-shirt that was tucked into dark fitted cargo pants, a uniform that stirred a sense of familiarity that Makoto could not grasp onto yet.

 

The clicks of his crutches disturbed the strange peace of the room. The man’s arms stopped stirring and the eggs sizzled in its place. Makoto stood hesitant, half outside of the room, half in. His heart raced, afraid but not. Questions whirled in his head, who was he? How did he get in? Was he a threat?

 

Did he have a dragon tattoo whose mouth gaped open at the base of his throat, just a little under his Adam’s apple?

 

“Who are you?” Makoto finally asked. The first logical question he could pull out with the light’s strain on his eyes and his hunger stirring awake with the smell of fresh eggs, food he did not indulge in for quite some time.

 

He could hear lips tug back into a smile, a faint laugh as the hand reached down to the stove, turning off the fire with a gentle click.

 

“What’s funny?” Makoto asked, perhaps not the next logical question but under the circumstances, it would have to do.

 

The man lifted the pan and began to scrape the eggs into a pile onto a plate nearby. He scraped it clean and pulled out one of the drawers nearby and plucked a fork out and placing it on the plate, the sounds of metal clattering ceramic unsettled Makoto. His hands gripped his crutches tighter, until the foam began to memorize each curve of his fingers.

 

“Are you listening to me?” Logic became flittering.

 

The man didn’t turn his head or his body. He merely balanced the plate in the palm of his hand and held it leveled to the side of his face, offering it to Makoto in his silence.

 

“I’m not hungry,” Makoto answered.

 

“Liar,” the man finally answered. The sounds of lips being tugged higher echoed. The spoken word rang in his ear, twisted his stomach and froze his heart for a brief second before remembering to beat again. A chill crawled under his skin, ice that had found its way between the space of bone and flesh.

 

The man turned expertly with perfect balance, the fork still rested delicately on the plate. “You look like that and you expect me to believe you’re not hungry?”

 

“You’re dead,” Makoto heard himself say. Where was the logic in any of this?

 

It had been weeks since the funeral, weeks since the murder, weeks and weeks and weeks. Weeks of sleepless nights and weeks of lethargy and weeks without a word that could escape his lips. And there, Daiki stood with a plate of eggs and a warm smile and questions that did nothing but fall out of Makoto’s mouth.

 

Daiki grabbed the pan with his free hand and dropped it into the sink before he headed over to the table and placed the meal down, pulling out a chair and turned it open for Makoto. “And now I’m haunting you.” He motioned Makoto over. “Come on, food’s going to get cold.”

 

“This is a dream,” Makoto said. He waited for the snow to fall, the tree to appear, big and old and green and luscious with a man in a suit swinging and rocking precariously on a branch high up.  But the snow never came as it never did, and his back still faced the dark room he caged himself in.

 

“Dream or not, you’re going to eat.” Daiki walked over, pulled Makoto forward by the crook of his arm, despite the crutches and pressed him to move to the table. Fear of falling down, Makoto struggled and began to make his way over. He sat down in the seat and stared at the steaming golden fluff of scrambled eggs. Dream or not, it smelled delicious. “Now, you get to taste my cooking,” Daiki answered with a smug grin.

 

Makoto stared at the dish.

 

“What? You want me to feed you too?”

 

“No,” he replied, his fingers faintly brushed the cold metal of the fork. He picked it up, gingerly between his fingers before fully holding it. He pushed the eggs from one end of the plate to the other. A faint smile crossed his lips. “You can’t cook.”

 

“Of course I can cook!” he exclaimed, placing his hands on his waist. “You just make these absurd assumptions about me. Eat it, and I’ll prove you wrong.”

 

Maybe, it was the delicate ring of his voice, the warm sound he was afraid would fade from his memory, that persuaded him to take a bite. Soft, warm, and savory, Makoto’s appetite returned. He scooped up more and more, scarfing down the meal before him. And sometimes, a question would probe him again, remind him that maybe this was a dream, maybe this wasn’t real, but he ate regardless.

 

“See? I am a good cook,” Daiki’s voice cheered with laughter. The chair across the table scratched the floor as he pulled it out and plopped himself down. He smiled as he watched, resting his chin into the palm of his hands.

 

He watched Makoto eat in silence with a tender smile.

 

 

 

 

“I think I’m going crazy.” Makoto laid on his side as he stared at the closed door of his bedroom. The captain’s gift hung on the door. His eyes trailed along the gold stitching of the snake and the rod.

 

The mattress dipped with the weight of another body beside him. The sheets rustled as the body shifted into a comfortable position, always sitting with his back against the headboard and one leg bent so his chin rested on his knee. He didn’t need to turn over to see. This had become their growing routine for the past few days.

 

Daiki snorted. “You wait a few days before you say that?”

 

“You’re dead,” he reminded himself, reminded his partner who casually rummaged through the contents of his nightstand.

 

“So what? Since when does being dead kill a person?”

 

Makoto turned his head to look over his shoulder and eye his partner’s profile, catch the rosy cheeks and the slight tan. He stared at the jugular vein that ran along his throat, only visible when he strained his neck to one side. If this was a dream, it was a long one. The longer it became, the uncertain Makoto became of wanting to wake up from it. It was too warm here. He didn’t want to return to the cold. “What does that mean? I went to your funeral. I saw your corpse.”

 

“Yeah, but you have your memories.” Daiki’s finger tapped Makoto’s temple. “Aren’t I still alive in here? So, I’m not dead. Not yet.”

 

“But I’m still crazy.”

 

His partner shrugged as he returned through his curious rummaging. “Or grieving.”

 

“When I stop mourning, will you disappear?”

 

“Probably.”

 

His lips thinned into a line and he closed his eyes. He’d let his guilt consume him, let it eat away his sanity if it needed to. Makoto had resigned to not let his partner go, to allow him to live even if it was all in his head.

 

It was the shrill sound of Makoto’s phone ringing, a sound he hadn’t heard from in a while. Daiki grabbed the phone and stared at the number. “If I answer it, what do you think the other line will hear? Do you think they’ll hear my voice or static like in those horror movies?”

 

Makoto shifted and rolled onto his other side, quickly snatching the cell phone out of his hands. He stared at the name, it was the hospital calling him. His head turned to look at the jacket that hung on the door. He wondered if they were calling him to ask him to come back. He prepared his mind to say no.

 

“Hello?”

 

A young voice greeted him, “Tachibana-san?” It sounded familiar. It reminded him of comfortable flats, and blushing rosy cheeks. It brought the image of a short bob that fell to one side as she tilted her head. “It’s Mei.”

 

“Oh, hi. Is there something wrong?” His voice sounded hoarse after not talking to someone real for so long.

 

“No, no, I was just calling because you haven’t come in for a check up. Doctor Etsuko wanted to see you, make sure the muscle is healing fine. He said he’s doing his rounds down in the ER, and wanted you to drop by today.”

 

Truth be told, he didn’t want to go back. He didn’t want to remember those hallways or the people that walked the corridors. He didn’t want to see faces that smiled, but also watched him with pity. He didn’t need to go back.

 

“I’m perfectly fine. You can tell him it’s healing well.” The lies only made the wound throb.

 

He heard Mei tap her pen on the desk. “But he wants to make sure--”

 

“I’m fine.” Those familiar words left his lips again. And he wanted someone to yell at him, shake him that he wasn’t. Like the time he said he wanted to cry and was told to or the time he was told not to smile because they didn’t want to see a smile so polished and fake.

 

“Tachibana-san,” Mei’s sentence was cut off. A voice in the background asked if she was speaking to Makoto and she answered yes. They asked if he was coming in and she said no, meekly. There was a sound of some shuffling and Mei’s perky voice was replaced with the deep tone that belonged to Doctor Etsuko. Makoto could see the man with the thick square glasses perched on a straight and slender nose. He could picture the sharp dark eyes and the high cheekbones that made an older man look so refined.

 

“You’re coming in to see me, 30 minutes from now.”

 

Makoto was about to object but Doctor Etsuko hung up before he got to say anything. The words, _I can’t. I don’t want to_ were left to linger on his tongue. He dropped the hand that held the phone back to the bed. He heard Daiki snicker.

 

“You’ve got no choice now. What old man Etsuko says is law.”

 

Makoto groaned as he rolled onto his stomach, burying his face into the pillow.

 

 

 

 

 

He didn’t remember the hospital being so white, spotless and clean. The only colors splashed about was the subdued seaweed green of the partition curtains, the beige headboard and footboard of the beds, and the blue and pink and checked squares of the nurses’ scrubs. Makoto sat on the edge of the bed, uncomfortable to fully lying down on it. If he even tried, his mind would wander to the week he spent recovering in his room, awake and alone, barely being able to sleep. His fingers curled around the smooth pill bottle tucked in his jacket while the other hand kept his crutches propped up against the EKG machine. His eyes flickered, watching old co-workers pass by with a quick nod of a hello but never a hello to be said.

 

Their eyes held the sympathy and the pity he didn’t want to see from the start.

 

“That’s a bit rude,” Daiki scoffed as he settled in, his arms folded behind his head. “What’s wrong with them?”

 

“It’s okay,” Makoto whispered between barely moving lips. “They’re just giving me space.”

 

“That’s the last thing you need,” he said while his fingers fiddled with the buttons along the rail of the bed.

 

“Stop that,” he tutted as he glanced at his partner over his shoulder.

 

“Stop what?”

 

Makoto’s face paled as he turned his head back again. His grip on the prescription bottle growing tighter. His eyes flickered onto Mei’s face, sweet, round and innocently smiling. Her bob had grown out and now brushed the tops of her shoulders, but it still swung to one side with ease with the crook of her head. His eyes darted to the thin older man beside her who was flipping through his chart on a metal clipboard. The square black frames nestled gently on the ridge of Dr. Etsuoko’s nose. He sucked in one cheek as he perused the numbers and looked at the scans. His eyes quickly flickered with the same quickness as a hummingbird’s flapping wings to stare at Makoto.

 

“The muscle in your leg is healing fine. Those crutches should be gone in two weeks,” the doctor said under his breath.

 

Makoto’s cheeks trembled, holding up a smile for so long. His muscles had forgotten how the practiced smile looked like. How high did it lift? Teeth, no teeth or just a bit? He stuck with no teeth and lifted his smile just a small amount, hoping it would look fine under the old doctor’s gaze.

 

Dr. Etsuoko extended his hand, long and slender and smooth but cold as the steel of the stethoscope that was tucked in the pocket on his scrubs. His fingers held Makoto’s chin and he turned his head from side to side.

 

“You’re not eating,” he stated. All the things he said were statements, and his calm voice gave it the authority it needed to sound like facts.

 

Makoto lowered his eyes. “I’ve been eating, just not as much.”

 

“Toasted bread and coffee daily is not eating,” Daiki scoffed. Makoto shifted his elbow to knock against Daiki’s leg, motioning him to shut up.

 

“You haven’t been sleeping well either.”

 

Makoto wanted to admit that he slept all the time, slept because he couldn’t find the energy or the motivation that once bubbled in his bones. So he stayed in his bed, dreamt of pitch black darkness and woke up to morning after mornings that filled with endless nothings except the imaginary body of a dead man who walked, talked, and cooked as if he was not dead at all and very much real outside of Makoto’s mind.

 

Dr. Etsuko dropped his fingers and sighed. He reached into his pocket with his prescription pad and pen. He clicked the pen and rested the nib on the sheet. He stopped himself from writing anything and asked, “Do you need to talk to anyone?”

 

Talk to anyone? Who could he talk to? What could he say? What was there to talk about?

 

The sheets rustled as Daiki shifted. He rested his chin on Makoto’s shoulder and he placed his hand on top of his head. It didn’t feel like anything, not warm, not cold, not light, not heavy. Nothing. It was just air and dust and his own imagination brushing his head. 

 

“He means talk to someone besides me,” his partner said with the fading warmth of old laughter.

 

Makoto kept his gaze focused on Mei’s black flats now scuffed and lined near the bottom with a ring of dirt and mud. They were well loved, he mused.

 

“Makoto?”

 

He lifted his gaze and kept that familiar smile up. His cheeks were numb and the trembling stopped. There was someone he wanted to talk to. A voice who carried words he needed to hear. “No,” he said. “I don’t need to talk to anyone.”

 

He didn’t say he was fine. At least, not yet.

 

“I’m going to prescribe you some vitamin supplements and a prescription for sleeping pills,” he said to Makoto. The pen moved fluidly, brush strokes of medication and when he was done with the pen still tucked between his fingers, he ripped the sheet and handed it to Makoto. “Here.”

 

He took the small sheet of paper and stared at the writing.

 

A firm hand fell onto his shoulder, the side where Daiki’s face had rested and was now gone. Dr. Etsuko left it there for a while until Makoto met his eyes, a brown dark enough to be black with lines that were etched in the corners of those small and narrow eyes. “Take care of yourself, Tachibana. You have a life ahead of you, don’t let it go no matter how bad it seems now.”

 

Dr. Etsuko gave his shoulder a squeeze, and his eyes crinkled with the faint look of a sad smile before he turned to leave. Mei trailed behind, handing a new chart of a new patient beside him.

 

He sat in speechless silence, still holding the prescription note. Finally, after recollecting himself, Makoto got off the bed, felt the gentle pulse of the wound. He grabbed the crutches and propped himself, making sure not to put any weight on the wrong leg.

 

As he began to amble out of the ER ward, Daiki asked, “Hey, what about your refill on the painkillers?”

 

He had forgotten the empty capsule. Makoto fished inside his pocket and glanced at the transparent orange bottle, medication that was supposed to last him a month, gone in two weeks. He turned it from side to side before tossing it in the trash bin nearby. “I don’t need it anymore,” he said.

 

 

 

 

 

The apartment was cold and empty. Daiki had disappeared as soon as he stepped foot outside the hospital building. The pain in his leg had slowly returned. Makoto lifted his leg and propped it on the coffee table. He held the card in his hands, flipping it over and over, and his cellphone in the other.

 

Pain. He needed the reminder of this pain.

Voice. He needed to hear a voice, hear the truth.

 

Makoto dialed the number and waited. The dial tone echoed, long and endless. Six rings in and he began to doubt that Sousuke would pick up the phone. But by the tenth, there was a click and a raspy, and hollow voice, one that sounded defeated and tired, aged centuries in a span of two weeks.

 

“It’s me,” Makoto began, “Do you think we can meet up?”

 

“Where?” No hello. No how are you. He expected that. He didn’t need them anyways.

 

“Wherever you do your business.”

 

There was a long silence. A silence that rang like a thousand chimes being blown at once by a powerful gust of wind.

 

“Which me are you expecting to see?”

 

The one that killed Daiki, my partner, he was tempted to say, but caught himself before it slipped. He ran a slow thumb over his sweatpants where the wound dipped in his flesh. “The one I met on the edge of death.”

 

Pause.

 

“Sharkhouse tomorrow at noon.”

 

Sousuke didn’t say anything else. No apologies or questions that he would usually ask. They didn’t say goodbye and both hung up. Makoto tilted his head back and stared at the ceiling of the apartment, expecting the dead man’s face to appear again as he had done before, but there was nothing, not even the faint sizzle of eggs.

 

 

 

 

It would have taken less than 15 minutes to reach the bar, just like it took just 15 minutes with their first date that night that felt so long ago and in a world completely different. But, today with his crutches, it took close to 25 minutes and his face stung from the cold. He stood between the hedges that formed the barrier. The doors of Sharkhouse were tinted black and there was not a soul in sight. Uozumi didn’t stand at the door and no one sauntered in as they had done that night before, draped in their money.

 

He stood there for a good five minutes before the door swung open and Sousuke stepped out. Makoto noticed the lack of a smile on the chiseled face. The teal eyes stared at him with a strange steadiness, the weight of a predator’s eyes.

 

“Come in,” he said, opening the door wider to the darkness inside. Sousuke tucked a hand into his tailored black pants.

 

Makoto’s crutches clicked as he made his way in. The afternoon light replaced by the dim light of the building. He stood by the threshold a few moments to let his vision adjust, to see the other eyes that stared back at him, suspicious and with sneers. Eyes that looked like eyes of dragons and mouths like a dragon’s mouth gaping, flashing its rows and rows of teeth.

 

The sensation of Sousuke’s breath against the nape of his neck sent a chill racing through his body, making him grip into the foam padding. “You wanted to see who _I_ really was, didn’t you? Here I am. Here I am with all my faces,” he said, motioning to the beady black eyes that stared back.

 

Makoto watched them all, noted the curves of their lips and the rise of their brows. He caught sight of tattoos and scars and birthmarks when his eyes grew used to the darkness. And among all those faces, he saw what he had always seen in Sousuke, the black lonely void that rested in the space between his heart and his ribs, the same black void that grew larger inside Makoto.

 

And if loneliness could gather like clusters of stars to form a new universe, this would what it would look like. All those broken and wandering black holes clinging to each other, Makoto saw the strange outline of a home.

 

Home. 

Is this where it is?

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sousuke Yamazaki had expected his heart to fill up like a balloon inflated or a dress lifting in the breeze at the sight of Makoto again. Instead, his heart fell, a hard stone down into the pits of his empty stomach. His eyes lingered on the dark circles that cradled under Makoto’s eyes, purple crescent moons of sleepless nights. His face sunk in, and his cheekbones peeked through. The shirt he wore, a shirt Sousuke had seen him wear around the apartment as they lounged around, hung loose on him, drapery against his suddenly small body frame. Sousuke kept his gaze brief and his hand tucked into his pocket as he stepped aside with the door opened for Makoto. His fingertips ached with the desire to reach out and work life and blood and flesh back into him, but he’d see the crutches and the slight flinching wince of the corner of Makoto’s eyes when he put too much weight on the injured leg and Sousuke would remember how his touch was poison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels weird not leaving A/Ns. I feel like the chapter is empty without my annoying little tidbits in the beginning. So, how are you guys? Y'all okay? I give hugs to those who need it. 
> 
> Comments, feedback, reviews, anything that floats into your mind is very welcome. (✿◠‿◠)

Sousuke Yamazaki had expected his heart to fill up like a balloon inflated or a dress lifting in the breeze at the sight of Makoto again. Instead, his heart fell, a hard stone down into the pits of his empty stomach. His eyes lingered on the dark circles that cradled under Makoto’s eyes, purple crescent moons of sleepless nights. His face sunk in, and his cheekbones peeked through. The shirt he wore, a shirt Sousuke had seen him wear around the apartment as they lounged around, hung loose on him, drapery against his suddenly small body frame. Sousuke kept his gaze brief and his hand tucked into his pocket as he stepped aside with the door opened for Makoto. His fingertips ached with the desire to reach out and work life and blood and flesh back into him, but he’d see the crutches and the slight flinching wince of the corner of Makoto’s eyes when he put too much weight on the injured leg and Sousuke would remember how his touch was poison. 

 

Dark eyes stared at the crippled man besides Sousuke. He could already guess what they were thinking as they polished their guns, counted the rounds and passed around the bulletproof vests. 

 

_Who is this?_

_Can we trust him?_

_What does he know?_

 

That was the downfall of man. Knowledge, the desire for it and the obtainment of it. A snake whispered in a woman’s ear and a woman whispered it to the man and doubt was planted, the tongue learned how to lie and that was how human beings came to function. Some of the men’s back grew rigid as Sousuke and Makoto walked to the back where the elevator was that would lead them up to his office. The men’s legs tensed, ready to stand up and their fingers curled around the trigger, just in case. 

 

That was the downfall of man. No one can be seen as innocent ever again. 

 

Makoto froze when the sound of a clip being reloaded echoed against the other waves of chatter and murmur. Sousuke looked down and saw the white of his knuckles as he curled his fingers into the padding. The words he wanted to whisper died in his mouth. He sidestepped around Makoto and walked ahead. Maybe it was better this way, walking first and not turning back. Makoto wouldn’t have to see this face either, the face of a murderer and a killer. 

 

“Let’s head to my office. We can talk there,” Sousuke said. 

 

Makoto didn’t say anything but the gentle clicking taps of his crutches reassured him that he was close behind. 

 

 

 

 

 

“Do you want anything to drink?” Sousuke asked as he shut the door behind them. It had been a while since it was just them two in a room alone together. The scene seemed unfamiliar now as Sousuke stood with his back to the door and his eyes following the outline and curve of Makoto’s body. He had forgotten how the ends of his hair curled along the nape of his neck and how one ear stuck out just a bit more than the other or how still even when it looked like he was collapsing from within, his shoulders were still strong and broad. 

 

“No, I’m fine.” Makoto’s voice was distant and detached. It rang empty and hollow, a seashell you can pick up and hear the ocean waves but really it was the sound of the rush of your own blood echoing. “Can I--” He turned his head slightly to the side to glance at Sousuke and point hesitantly at the couch.

 

“Yeah. Make yourself at home,” Sousuke answered. He walked over to the small side table and twisted out the stopper for the glass decanter and poured out half a glass of scotch. The smoky sweet scent drifted as he brought the glass to his lips to take a small sip.

 

They sat across from each other in the silence that once brought them together and had also once sliced every bit of their sanity. And now, the silence was nothing but a filler, an empty space of quiet air between them. Sousuke leaned back into his seat with an arm stretched across the back of the couch. Makoto’s eyes darted about the room taking in the sleek oak desk behind him, the view of the stretch of the city from windows that stretched from floor to ceiling. His green eyes moved over back onto Sousuke’s face, locking eyes with his. For once, he didn’t duck his gaze shyly as he did before.

 

_How are you_ seemed too insincere.

_What did you want to talk about_ seemed too brash.

 

So, they stuck with silence and tried to make it an old friend again. 

 

It was Makoto who broke the silence. He didn’t crack the air with his voice, but with the shift and ruffle of his clothes as he dug into the pockets of his dark jeans and pulled out his wallet. His bony fingers now pulled out a thin piece of paper that seemed bent and folded in the corners. He held it between his fingers and took a long look before he placed the paper down. Sousuke’s eyes followed down the length of his arm, to the tips of his fingers and reaching the paper that was not paper at all but a photograph. 

 

Makoto pushed with two fingers firmly placed on top of the image closer to Sousuke across the table. He dropped his arm and leaned forward, meeting Makoto’s reach in the middle and pulling it towards him. He picked it up, let his eyes drift over the faces, 5 in total. Makoto stood at the far right with a beaming smile, one that scratched at Sousuke’s mind but had been long forgotten, a smile that stirred nostalgia in his heart. Then it moved to a woman with short pixie cut black hair. Her eyes crinkled as she had her hands clasped in front of her and her body flanked by two taller figures. On the left, Sousuke recognized as Makoto’s partner. He had a wide smile that stretched across his tan face. In his arms, he cradled a baby girl that he angled to face the camera. Makoto held the other in his arms, but didn’t lift her. 

 

_Were these happier days_ , Sousuke wondered. After giving it a long look, trailed his eyes over their frozen faces, he placed the photo down onto the glass coffee table again. His eyes flickered up to Makoto again. 

 

“I want to know the truth,” Makoto began, his voice barely above a whisper. 

 

“What truth?”

 

Makoto met his eyes again. His eyes were locked onto Sousuke’s, strong and unwavering. But, the lines that ran between his brows, the curve of the dark circles of sleepless nights made his strength look draining. “Daiki.” He cleared his throat before he could continue. His hands that were clasped together tightened as he continued, “Daiki, tell me…tell me if he was meant to die.”

 

He looked down at the photo that rested on the table between them. He stared at the smiling father and he was briefly reminded of his father’s broad smile as he ruffled his hair and the strong arms of his mother that scooped him up from off the floor. Memories trickled into the desert of his mind. One memory, one drop of water falling on a cracked and dried soil. He tilted his head as his eyes continued to stare at the photograph. 

 

Sousuke leaned forward with his elbows propped against his thigh. He pressed his lips to his hands, clasped together. He stared at the photo, but wasn’t seeing the photo. He saw a fire, a knife, and eyes that screamed when voices couldn’t. “Why?”

 

“I just need to know.”

 

“What good would it do if I told you?” His voice sounded like an echo, hollow and empty and a sound that had bounced from wall to wall before it reached their ears. He had repeated this question many times. This was the first he said it aloud, for Makoto, for himself, for the dead hands that brushed his face when he was alone with his thoughts.

 

“I don’t…” Makoto’s words trailed off, silencing himself before his voice cracked.

 

“If I told you his death was an accident, a casualty, a fluke, would you seek revenge?” Makoto remained silent. Sousuke pressed further, his eyes closing, shutting out the lonely face before him and recalling a kitchen, and a man who had his father’s eyes but was not his father. 

 

“And if you wanted revenge, how far would you go? Would you hurt them?” The hands he clasped together felt a brush of hair, and he felt his nails dig into flesh—scalp. 

 

“How much would you hurt them? Until they bled?” The sensation of the force of the round head being thrown and bashed against the marble island tingled in his palms. He saw blood fly, some of it splattered on his cheeks. The blood didn’t feel hot or cold against his skin. It didn’t feel like anything.  

 

“Would you kill? A life for a life?” He remembered the piercing stare of dead eyes that were once a beautiful and a warm brown. Eyes that crinkled when it smiled and grew wide as old tales were told. The story of King Midas, stories treasured in the Christian bible—a man who parted the sea and folded it upon his enemies after crossing--, stories of a scholar and a half-snake woman falling in love. 

 

Sousuke opened his eyes and flicked his gaze up to Makoto whose head was ducked and whose falling hair shaded half his face. His fingers itched to reach out and push back those bangs, tilt his head up again and see what he could in those eyes. Were they still the luscious green fields of spring or were they murky swamp water with algae clumping and gathering in the marsh? 

 

“He can’t be just a casualty. He can’t be just a casualty,” Makoto repeated.

 

“What if I told you he was? Because you knew me, because I am poison, because my hand reaches out and whatever it touches it destroys. Would you want to kill me?”

 

With his head still lowered, Makoto answered, “Yes.” Slowly, he lifted his head, his hair skewed as it fell back into place. The green of swamp and marshes, of darkness that hid crocodiles and alligators beneath the surface stared back at him. “I would want to, but what would that leave me?” The eyes softened as Makoto gazed down at the photograph. “If I killed you, then what?”

 

Then what? _Then a man with red hair and a black suit walks into your life and cleans the kitchen floors with bleach._

 

Then what? _Then you step into a black car and he takes you to a building, introduces you to men with fat rings and fat smiles._

 

Then what? _Then you collect money, you collect blood. You collect and collect and while you collect, you trade. You give away a piece of your heart, your eyes, your ears, your mouth. You give until there is nothing left in you besides money and blood and ashes of bodies left in your wake that will coat your suit and your lungs._

 

Then what? _Then, you climb to the top, climb until you’re a man with fat rings on your fingers and wait for someone to kill you too. A cycle, this life.An endless repetition of revenge being repeated._

 

“Then nothing,” Sousuke answered. “No one will congratulate you. No one will praise you. The dead will not be resurrected. And you’ll be stuck with blood on your hands and the color and the smell, they won’t fade even if you wash them, even if years have passed. You look down, and you see it, fresh.” He picked up the glass of scotch and downed the rest. It burned as it slid down his throat. 

 

His voice echoed with the hollow roar of the oceans again. “Do you know what they said to me, before they shot me?” He didn’t answer but Makoto continued anyways, “They said this was a message, a message for you.” The eyes flickered up and locked its gaze on him. “If this was a message for you, why am I still alive?” That was the question that haunted the man it seemed. Didn’t Sousuke ask himself the same? 

 

_Why am I alive?_

_Why am I alive?_

_Why am I alive?_

_Why am I alive?_

 

Makoto buried his face in his hands. His fingers curled and scraped his scalp. The question repeated inside both of their minds. 

 

“That’s not how Samezuka works,” Sousuke began, his voice sandpaper grating in the air as he spoke quietly. “Killing you would have been too easy.” He leaned back into the chair, still holding onto the glass tumbler. His eyes lowered as he stared at it, turning it from side to side. His lips flicked into a half smile as he spoke. “Did you know I tried to keep you hidden from them? I didn’t do a very good job. I mean…I went to see you every day. I walked you home to your apartment and even took you to mine. You even came here. I wasn’t hiding you, but I thought I was. I thought if Makoto just didn’t know the real me, this yakuza group leader side of me, it’ll be okay. He won’t get involved. No one will notice him. It’ll all be okay.” 

 

His grip tightened around the cup. Sousuke continued in the same soft voice, “But they like to remind you that there is no such thing as a public and private life in the group. Once you join, each inch of your life becomes theirs. And, there’s a cost against trying to change it. They left you alive with that scar.” He tilted the glass towards Makoto’s wounded leg. He could imagine the circle of a scar and the veins and stitches around it. How it hurt to be touched even months after it had healed. 

 

“And they killed your partner because leaving your scarred is one thing, but having you live hating me, resenting me, wanting to kill me would be much better.” Sousuke’s lips twisted into the habitual smirk, the turn of the lips he’d learned from joining the gang. “I would have done the same. It leaves your hands less dirty, and a homicide that has a suspect and a motive all neatly wrapped in a box.”

 

Sousuke’s teal eyes flickered up. He stared at the mask formed from Makoto’s hands. “Daiki’s death wasn’t a casualty, isn’t that what you wanted to hear?”

 

He watched as Makoto’s body shook as he laughed. It was muffled in his hands, but he laughed. He brushed it off as the sinking grief registering in his mind, clicking like gears that suddenly fit. Sousuke got up again and placed the glass back onto the tray. He stood there with closed eyes and listened to the sickened laughter that twisted the heart inside his chest. When the laughter faded, he turned around again. Makoto had dropped his hands between his legs. His head tilted back to stare up at the ceiling, a strange smile on his lips with the dead green eyes. 

 

“Makoto?” Sousuke called out. He slowly walked over to where Makoto sat. He crouched down, his hand hesitated before it rested on Makoto’s knee. 

 

“Well, it worked,” he breathed out. “I do hate you. I hate you so much.” 

 

Makoto’s fingers curled and turned white as he clenched it harder. Maybe it was memory that pulled him. Sousuke reached out to brush his fingers along the side of Makoto’s face, lean in a whisper how everything was okay when everything was not. He should have learned it was bad to live in memories, looking in the past meant not seeing the present, like how a hand curled up into a ball was not a static motion, that a hand that was gripped that it turned that white would eventually move, it would eventually swing and it would eventually connect with his jaw and have him bite into his tongue, send him falling back on the floor with his hand catching onto the edge of the coffee table, saving himself from hitting his head on its corner though grazing his temple a bit. 

 

Memory would have not seen green eyes so dark that it held predators in the black pools. It would not have seen Makoto’s jaw clench as he grabbed Sousuke be the collar of his shirt, pulling him up. 

 

Tears trickled down and he still repeated the words before. “I hate you, Sousuke. I hate you so much.”

 

Why did the pain fade when he saw those soft lips tremble? 

Why did he reach out again when he felt the hand that gripped him loosen in its hold?

Why did he see a man instead of a tree, hovering above him in a world that snowed and felt tears fall on his face instead of the brush of cherry blossoms drifting down?

 

“I hate you. So, why does this hurt?”

 

Sousuke took a hold of his arm and pulled him down. He folded the man made of flesh and bone into his arms as he lips moved against his hair. “Because you said you loved me didn’t you? And everyone knows love is cruel.”

 

“I don’t know what to do,” Makoto answered, his words muffled against Sousuke’s black jacket.

 

“Do you want to kill me still?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Maybe that scar left behind was a good thing. Like stripping down a tree to its bare barks. Like ripping off the wings off an angel to make it more human. This was Makoto, at his core, an angel ripped, a tree stripped. And Sousuke held him like a rare treasure, a city lost under the ocean tides. He closed his eyes and rested his chin on Makoto’s head. The body wrapped between his arms grew more solid and hard the longer he held him. 

 

_There was a story of a king whose touch turned his beloved daughter into gold._

 


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Those men,” Sousuke said, wincing as Makoto ran the wet antiseptic swab over the cut along his temple. “The ones that shot you, what did they look like?”
> 
>  
> 
> The brunette didn’t answer. His eyes lowered, he strung together some thread in a needle he managed to find in the first aid kit. Sousuke glanced down and watched the string slip through easily. He admired the long fingers, but wondered if they had always been that thin and nimble. He concentrated on them until they were moved away and Makoto’s fingertips now pressed against his forehead.
> 
>  
> 
> “This is going to hurt a bit,” Makoto said, his voice cold and distant, a doctor to a patient that waltzed into the emergency room with a wound too shallow and took too much of his time, time that could be used for the five other cases that piled heavy on his shoulders.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slowly but surely, we're coming full circle. Take that as you will.
> 
> Comments, feedback, reviews, anything that floats into your mind is very welcome. Love you guys! Chapter 19 may take a bit longer to update since the semester is ending so going to be much much busier than usual, but I'll try not to take too long!

“Those men,” Sousuke said, wincing as Makoto ran the wet antiseptic swab over the cut along his temple. “The ones that shot you, what did they look like?”

 

The brunette didn’t answer. His eyes lowered, he strung together some thread in a needle he managed to find in the first aid kit. Sousuke glanced down and watched the string slip through easily. He admired the long fingers, but wondered if they had always been that thin and nimble. He concentrated on them until they were moved away and Makoto’s fingertips now pressed against his forehead.

 

“This is going to hurt a bit,” Makoto said, his voice cold and distant, a doctor to a patient that waltzed into the emergency room with a wound too shallow and took too much of his time, time that could be used for the five other cases that piled heavy on his shoulders.

 

Sousuke lifted his eyes to catch Makoto’s steady gaze. He stared intently on the cut, never wavering to glance down. It was a pinprick of pain as the needle slipped into the tender skin, but the alcohol swab burned and ached much more than this.

 

“You’re not going to tell me?” Sousuke asked.

 

Makoto stitched and looped, pulling the needle with the same speed and skill as a tailor. “I don’t want to remember,” he said, though the slight clench of his jaw proved otherwise. His fingertips were cold against his temple, though the chill eased the pulse that throbbed where the cut was. Sousuke wondered if Makoto felt his heart beat beneath his fingers where he pressed. If he did, could he understand it? Of course, if he could, if he was skilled in the language of the Morse code of the heart, they wouldn’t be here; Sousuke would not have known that out of all the scars in the world made by bullets, that his looked like a flower branded on his chest and he would have still been smoking, rotting his body from the inside out instead of giving up the habit and handing it to a one night stand.

 

He licked his lips. It had been months since he quit and now he got the cravings for the taste of nicotine again.

 

“But you do remember.”

 

Makoto continued tugging and stitching in silence.

 

“Those faces, the ones that take away people you care about, those faces stick with you for life.”

 

Makoto reached over to the coffee table and grabbed a small pair of scissors to snip the thread.

 

“Tell me.”

 

He placed the cool shears against his temple. The ice of the blade sent a dangerous tingle down his spine. Sousuke glanced up without moving his head. Makoto stared down at him with unwavering and piercing eyes. The predators in the swampy green of his eyes stirred. “What would you do if I told you?”

 

“I’ll make things right.”

 

“There’s nothing to make right,” he said, still not cutting.

 

“There’s always something to make right. When the world is wrong, you’ve got to turn over every rock and flip every leaf until it’s right again.” Sousuke’s hand carefully reached up to where the shears were. His fingers curled around the curve of the handles and pinched down, finally snipping the thread. “And the world for you right now, it’s wrong, isn’t it? I’ll fix it.”

 

Makoto didn’t move. It took him about a minute before he lowered the hand that still held the scissors and the other that held the needle with a trailing string still looped in the eye. “How?” The question gave away a hint of hope. Maybe he trusted Sousuke to do this.

 

Sousuke leaned forward and grabbed a band aid, ripping it out and peeling off the paper. His fingers probed for the ridges of the stitches before he placed it over. “Tell me what those men look like,” he said again.  Repeating and repeating, Sousuke wondered if that was how sirens of mythology lured in sailors. Repeating words over and over in the calmest of tones with the melodic of voices until it echoed in their minds without even hearing the song and made them row their boats into the jagged rocks or swim desperately in waters infested with darker creatures.

 

His eyes stared at the door to the office as if expecting someone to walk in, but when he spoke, Sousuke knew Makoto didn’t even see the room. He was on the street, lying on the ground, staring up at figures that blocked the dim light of the street post. His fingers reached up and trailed and curved along his throat under his Adam’s apple. “One of them had a tattoo, here. It was a dragon with its mouth open.” He continued in his daze, bringing his finger up to the side of his face. “And the other had a scar that ran,” he touched the edge of his right brow and drew a straight line down to the corner of his lip, “down like that.” He held it there for a beat before dropping his hand and carefully turning around, tucking the tools back into the box.

 

He hopped over and grabbed the crutches that stood propped against the armrest of the chair. “I should probably go.”

 

“Didn’t you want to talk?”

 

Makoto looked down as he answered, “I just wanted to see if the real you…if this yakuza you felt guilt too for Daiki.” His fingers reached into his pocket where the photograph was returned. “At least I know you do even if it’s not for him, at least you still feel it.”

 

“What if I didn’t?”

 

Makoto had crossed the room and reached the door already. He stopped with his hand resting on the knob. “Then you’d really be a monster.”

 

Watching someone leave was always a desperate thing, a violent desire to feel loneliness wrap its bony fingers around your throat while the foot of another crosses the threshold. There’s a moment of seizure, a desire to call out but the pressure to remain and watch in solitude. Sousuke felt the long loneliness brush his neck, a tender lover trying to embrace him again. And in fear, he called out as the door opened, “Are you going back home? Let me call Uozumi to drive you home.”

 

“It’s okay. I’m not going home yet.” He took a few steps out the door before turning back to look at Sousuke. “And…I think I need some time by myself. Uozumi would just…”

 

Sousuke nodded understanding. Uozumi would have been a solid reminder of the blood and the guns and the colonies that formed Samezuka. Uozumi would be a reminder to Makoto, he would see Sousuke’s face probably and a face smeared with the blood of his partner. Loneliness wrapped its thin arms around Sousuke as the door shut. His ears strained to hear the gentle clacks of the crutches, but there was nothing but silence.

 

He settled back into the couch and breathed out.

They didn’t say goodbye, and his heart slowed down with relief. He feared that if Makoto had said goodbye that would surely be the last time they would ever see each other again. The only memento he would have was delicate stitching across his skin.

 

When the sun began to slip and the sky faded into a gentle hue of magenta and orange, Sousuke looked at watch on his wrist. He had been sitting there for god knows how long and the sweet scotch taste still lingered on his tongue. He sighed as he got up and slipped on his black jacket again. He smoothed out the wrinkles and buttoned the middle button on his suit as he headed out. The light from the hallway flooded into the dark office and Sousuke closed it behind him.

 

He shuffled down the staircase back down to the first level. Half of the men were already out at their posts, securing the group’s turf. The other half still sat around, sucking on cigarettes and taking swigs of their beers. Their movements stilled when they saw Sousuke. The cards they were holding up straight lowered, and their grumbling voices hushed in one swift breeze. Their eyes flickered over to Sousuke who stood in the middle of the room with his hands tucked in his pockets.

 

“What’s wrong, boss?” a voice called out.

 

He brought his thumb from the right corner of his brow to the edge of his lips. “Anyone know a man in Samezuka with a scar here?”

 

“That’s Takamura Kiyoshi from the 5th ward.”

 

His index finger tapped at the base of his throat. “What about a dragon tattoo here?”

 

“Kodama Matsu. He’s the head of the 5th.”

 

Someone else murmured, “Didn’t he blow out Momotarou’s kneecap two nights ago over in Ikebukuro?”

 

“Shit, seriously? No fucking wonder Seijuurou’s been so pissed.”

 

 _Who wouldn’t be?_ Sousuke wanted to ask. Who wouldn’t be angry and vengeful after death knocked on your door and grabbed the person standing next to you instead? And later spitting them back up again, this time crippled with hollowed eyes and sunken cheeks and all the spring and life sucked out.

 

“I need 4 guys willing to go with me to the 5th ward.”

 

“Whatcha gonna do, boss?” Minami asked, stretching like a feline across the bar counter. His eyes narrowed to slits, watching even the slightest flinch of Sousuke’s moves. His long fingers intertwined as he straightened back up again.

 

Sousuke’s lips twisted into the familiar smirk. “The only natural thing to do during a war. Take prisoners.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

He never promised Makoto he would break his habit. He never said he would peel off his skin and start as a new man. And even then, habits run in the blood. Cells follow routine, up and down familiar paths and back again. Even if he did shed this life, it’d still linger in his blood, his bone, his marrow and sinews. He could not change, even if he tried. So, Sousuke followed the four, 10 minutes behind into the dark club, slipping past grinding bodies that thumped with every flashing beat of neon strobes.

 

The ravers would not even hear the scuffle in the back room, the shouts and the clatter of broken bottles falling to the ground. It was drowned in the music.

 

He reached the backroom, stared at the three bodies knocked unconscious or probably dead lying on the floor in the narrow corridor that led to the office. He sidestepped carefully over the bodies, making sure not to step on the blood or the spit. Minami tutted behind him as he looked over the site.

 

Sousuke entered the large office space, looked over the décor of the room and settled onto the man of the hour who had his wrists zip tied and a split lip. The dragon on his neck stared at Sousuke with a wide and open smile on his mouth. It almost looked mocking for a moment, laughing back at him.

 

“I think this is the first time we’ve ever met, Kodama-san,” Sousuke said as he walked over and crouched down to meet eye-level with him. He grabbed a fistful of his hair and pulled his head back to let the fluorescent lights of the office reach the man’s face, cut and turning purple now from the scuffle.

 

He only groaned out a response.

 

“You’re not great on first impressions, are you? Because this is the first time we’ve met and you already fucking disgust me.” Sousuke’s grip grew tighter and his hand pushed down, slamming Kodama’s head once against the hard wood of the floors. A circular patch of blood was left behind. Sousuke lifted the head back to its rightful position again, staring at the closed eyes, smelling the alcohol that escaped the parted lips.

 

He let his hand go, letting the body slide down to the floor.

 

“Take them back to the shop. We’ll finish the rest there.”

 

“Yes, boss.” They scooped the two bodies, the one with the dragon tattoo and the man with the scar and dragged them out to the back door.

 

Minami stood at the frame of the doorway with his hands folded across his chest. “You got your hands dirty, boss.”

 

Sousuke looked down at his hand, saw some stain of blood on his fingertips. He took out a handkerchief from his pocket and started wiping it off, only turning the tips of his fingers slightly redder after.

 

“Taking in Takamura and Kodama, how much of that was for that crippled guy that came this afternoon?”

 

Sousuke continued rubbing and rubbing, trying not to let Minami’s words tense his shoulders too much.

 

“10%? 50?” Minami walked over and dropped his chin on his left shoulder, the side where the devil belonged and tilted his head. Sousuke saw the small turn of his head in the corner of his eyes. Minami scrutinized every inch. “You’re getting too emotional, boss. Keep it up and It’ll fuck you over.”

 

Sousuke laughed. “I was fucked over when I was born, Minami. I don’t need you to tell me shit like that.”

 

Minami didn’t move his head, but his gaze had moved away from Sousuke’s face and down to the paper and half counted money on the desk. His voice reverberated along his shoulder as he spoke again, “You know boss, the boys and I, the group’s our family. You picked up a bunch of fucked up strays on the street and threw us together. And in a twisted way, you kind of saved us.”

 

“I didn’t save anyone.”

 

Minami chuckled as he took a step back. “You might not think so, but really that’s not the point.”

 

He turned his head to the side and kept his eyes lowered on the bloody circle patch besides his shoes. “What’s the point then?”

 

“We’ll go wherever you want us to go. We’ll even go to the depths of hell for you. But don’t send us on suicide missions just because you’re too blind to see straight.” Minami’s fingers gave Sousuke’s shoulder a strong squeeze before letting go as he turned on his heel to leave. His hands clapped together as he began talking to himself, falling back in step with his usual demeanor. “I wonder what Uozumi is going to cook tonight for us. God, I’m starving.”

 

Minami left Sousuke there with his hand stilled with the white handkerchief left with red smears on its surface. He dropped it on the floor before he followed Minami out too.

 

 

 

 

With rolled up sleeves and a button undone, Sousuke sat with legs spread on a wooden crate. Extending his feet, he pushed forward and let the two bodies that hung side-by-side swing back and forth, slowly like a rocking cradle for babies that needed to be lulled to sleep or meat hanging at an abattoir. The heavy swing must have stirred them awake because the empty room filled with a raspy moan and those heavy eyelids began to slowly open. Two pairs of eyes opened up to the sight of Sousuke’s lowered head and a butterfly knife that spun and twisted between his thumb and index finger.

 

The chains rattled against the hook as they tried to shake themselves loose.

 

Sousuke laughed once. “Good, I was getting tired just sitting here.”

 

The gruffer voice spoke, “You fucking dick! Let us go!”

 

He lifted his eyes and let his lips twitch up into a smile. It was Komada who spoke, whose Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed his saliva. Beads of sweat trickled down his face. “That’s not how you greet a colleague.”

 

“As if we’d befriend shit scum like you!” the other, Takamura, shouted.

 

The blade glinted as it twisted and turn and caught the light of the room. Sousuke slowly rose out of his seat with a hand in his pocket and the other still playing, flipping and turning and making sure his skin didn’t graze the sharp point. He stood in front of Takamura and cocked his head to the side.

 

“That scar,” he slowly brought his knife up to the point at the corner of his brow. His smile grew wide. “How it runs down, so straight on your face. It makes you look like a ventriloquist’s dummy, you know?” Sousuke let the point of the knife dig deeper and deeper, sinking into the flesh and slowly dragging it down, opening up the wound that had been sealed off for years and years. Takamura screamed, spit flying and chains rattled. His tied legs thrashed, a fish floundering in the air.

 

The blood gushed and spilled down his face, slipping into his mouth and dripping down. Sousuke took a step back, making sure the blood didn’t drop onto his clothes or his shoes. He flipped the knife onto its side and wiped the blood off the length of the blade with his finger. He brushed the red off the stainless steal with the ease of brushing crumbs off a dinner table. Slowly, Sousuke rocked with easy steps over to Komada who watched his right hand man wheeze and cry and spit and sputter out the blood that slipped into his mouth.

 

Sousuke gazed up, raising his head high as he gazed upon the eyes of the dragon. He finger tapped the blade. Komada turned his head back to stare down at Sousuke. His eyes held the anger only powerful men who were trapped had, the eyes of the strongest mythical beast caged by human hands, filled with snarls and determined eyes.

 

“You doing all this for fucking Mikoshiba and his pathetic pussy of a brother?”

 

Sousuke didn’t answer. He brought the blade up and rested high on the man’s shoulder.

 

Komada spat out a laugh. “You guys are so fucking screwed. You think you’re so powerful because you’ve banded together. You and Mikoshiba have each other’s dicks so far up each other’s asses that you can’t understand that you’re just gonna fucking die like the idiot fucks you are.”

 

Sousuke cocked his head, let his eyes trail down the length of Komada’s chest that rose and fell heavy and faster as he exclaimed. His lips fell from the smile it held earlier and his eyes stared at the tattooed skin with empty eyes. “I’m not,” he finally said.

 

“What?”

 

“You asked if I was doing this for Seijuurou. I’m not.” The knife slowly broke the smooth skin and sunk into the flesh. Blood pooled and trickled down slowly. He began to slide the blade diagonally inwards, towards his chest.

 

“I got your message,” Sousuke said, his teal eyes catching the dark pupils that stared at him, growing wide with realization. “And you know what? I’m glad. I’m glad you reminded me. Now, I’m just going to do you the same favor. You and I, we’re the same too.” Sousuke stopped the blade at the center of his chest and brought the knife up to the other shoulder, repeating the same motion in. “We’re the same even on the inside. I’ll even show it to you.”

 

Komada’s screams rang and rang in Sousuke’s ears. It echoed as it bounced off the walls, repeating the same curses and swears. The blood flowed fresh and hot, covering the hand that moved deftly with the blade over his skin.

 

_Makoto, am I a monster to you now?_


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Makoto always feared ghosts. In fact, he was sure he read somewhere that a large population of the world did also. That’s what funded priests to exorcise haunted homes and haunted bodies. That’s what convinced people to burn food and burn money for spirits because surely they’ll be able to catch it in the afterlife, eat its ash and barter the dust. He never could remember what made him so scared of them. He naturally assumed it as the idea of the cold chill and an icy touch of air that trailed along the back on one’s neck when no one was around or maybe it was the way folktales and movies showed how lingering spirits possessed bodies, turning their limbs in ways not meant to be turned under the laws of human anatomy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments, feedback, reviews, or general thoughts are always loved and welcomed!
> 
> Also on another side note, I've been making more mixtapes for this series. This time around, purely classical/instrumental songs. You can find the first two here (http://8tracks.com/aesopeau). And I want to wish everyone a early happy thanksgiving! And to those of you who don't, I wish a happy week wherever you are! <3

Makoto always feared ghosts. In fact, he was sure he read somewhere that a large population of the world did also. That’s what funded priests to exorcise haunted homes and haunted bodies. That’s what convinced people to burn food and burn money for spirits because surely they’ll be able to catch it in the afterlife, eat its ash and barter the dust. He never could remember what made him so scared of them. He naturally assumed it as the idea of the cold chill and an icy touch of air that trailed along the back on one’s neck when no one was around or maybe it was the way folktales and movies showed how lingering spirits possessed bodies, turning their limbs in ways not meant to be turned under the laws of human anatomy.

 

While he sat, crouched down in front of the Shidehara family tombstone, he understood what was so frightening about ghosts. It wasn’t the fact that they could not be touched or that they were the spirits of the dead, or that maybe in their hearts they were vengeful and did want to twist limbs not meant to be twisted. It’s when they stop. When after all that haunting, they fade and move on. Maybe they go to hell or maybe they’ve crossed over to the gates of heaven or maybe they just disappear after time. But, it’s when the chemical reaction in your body dulls and you’re no longer frightened and your heart doesn’t race when there's the tingling nerves of an icy sensation of a hand that isn’t really there or when you’re comfortable with the spectator that it finally hits you. It’s when they fade, they leave or their presence doesn’t affect you anymore and the chilling company that walked by your side slowly disappears that you start to miss the ghost. When the dead finally disappear, that’s when you feel something more frightening sink into your bones.

 

When you ask, _now what?_

And not even loneliness will answer because now you’re really alone and that’s all there is to it.

 

Makoto shifted his weight from one foot to the other, the crunch of the gravel echoing. He tried finding his balance as he crouched here without putting too much pressure on his injury. He wrapped his arms around his legs and let his eyes travel down the freshly washed and cleaned marble of the stone. His fingers reached out and picked up the cards with crayon drawings and writing scribbled all over. He figured there was a message there, but the lines were drawn so haphazardly that the note was lost in the scrawled blobs on the pages.

 

His lips tugged into a smile, already hearing what Daiki would say if he had said that aloud: _What do you mean you can’t read it? It obviously says that they love me. Daddy’s #1! Can’t you see? Ah, Tachi, one day you’ll gain a father’s intuition and you’ll be able to read it all._

 

The incense Makoto had lighted continued to burn. He tucked his chin in the crook of his gathered arms and watched the stick burn black and curling down as it crumbled. He missed the hallucination just as much as he missed the man. How long will it take for the chemicals responsible for this sense of mourning and grieving and guilt begin to dull and fade? Makoto’s fingers curled into the sleeves of his jacket as he closed his eyes. Perhaps never or perhaps when even in his guilt he desired the heavy and gentle touch of Sousuke’s hand. Perhaps when his fingers didn’t throb with the memory of touching his skin as he stitched close the cut along his temple, smooth and warm beneath his fingertips. Perhaps when his ears stopped aching with the sound of Sousuke’s voice, deep and rough at some points and smooth and warm at others and sometimes, the best of times, still tinged with the sheepishness of a teenage boy, unsure and hesitant and shy. And other words repeated, the broken voice of a man saying he’d fix the world in the same cadence of a broken record being played on a gramophone, repeating and repeating. For a moment in the quiet of the room, with them two together alone and the sunlight traveling from one corner of the room to the other, Makoto had believed that Sousuke could fulfill his promise. His ears had become deaf to the violent scratch and skip of the record player and only heard the smooth words.

 

His heart laughed. If anyone would be a ghost, it’d be Sousuke, haunting his mind even when he was not around, brushing his cold fingers over his throbbing mind when his hand was nowhere near. Surely, even when Sousuke died, Makoto would be haunted with the memories despite the seemingly handful of days they actually spent together in a warped happiness. Makoto buried his face in his hands, let his fingers grip his hair and tug it, pulling it to stop himself from crying again.

 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, barely audible to the marble stone. “I wanted to come here and see you and all I end up thinking about is him.” His voice choked up a short laugh as he apolgozied again and again.

 

He squeezed his eyes shut close, hoping to slip into old dreams again, dreams that never appeared to him anymore. Dreams of a land filled with snow, but was not snowing. He didn’t even need the tree anymore. Just the rabbit, the small snow rabbit with eyes made from his fingers digging in and ears made from dried dead leaves buried deep into the ground. That was all he needed. The rabbit.

 

The voice cracked his dream, cracked the blackness formed by his closed eyes. “Excuse me.”

 

Makoto’s heart stopped. He imagined a chilling touch at the base of his neck. Of course, not the icy touch of a ghostly hand, but the rim of a gun barrel, positioned accurately for a fatal shot, prepared to rid him now that he was breaking down. Paranoia and jitters and the slightest sounds made his chest tighten now and his palms grow clammy. He had to remind himself that it was all in his imagination. All he heard was a voice, nothing more. How dangerous the fearful mind was.

 

Slowly, Makoto opened his eyes and breathed out, shallow and shaking. With gripping fear, he turned his head slowly to catch the face that belonged to the monotonous voice. His eyes caught onto a lean but lanky body wearing a white button down shirt a size too large on his frame with sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His hair was dark in the same darkness as night. If you looked at it long enough, you’d see a sheen of color. Navy? Violet? He stood cradling a small pot of succulents in his hands, thin hands smeared and splattered with paint.

 

“I’m sorry,” Makoto apologized quickly, flustered. He hoped his eyes were not pricked red or watery. He hoped that only the ghost in his mind and the ghost of the grave were the only ones who saw his tears.

 

“Navy,” the stranger said. His blue eyes stared intently at Makoto, the blue eyes were clear and calm as fresh water. “Navy with dashes and dots of yellow.”

 

“What?”

 

The man looked away and crouched down too besides Makoto, placing the plant down besides the cards from Ema and Koyo. He placed his palms together as he closed his eyes and pressed the sides of his hands up to his lips. Makoto sat in confused silence, turning his attention to the gravestone and occasionally glancing over at the man who radiated a strange peace that wrapped itself around Makoto too. The stranger finally dropped his hands, but remained crouched beside him, not intending to move anytime soon. Maybe he was doing just as Makoto did, wanting to talk to Daiki some more even if he couldn’t answer back.

 

“His was yellow,” the stranger spoke up after a while.

 

“Yellow?”

 

“His voice. It was yellow.”

 

Makoto turned back to the marble and imagined Daiki’s voice again. It rang as clear as the first day they had met three years ago. He listened to the fluctuations, the cadence and the tenor. If Daiki’s voice had a color, it would be yellow. Bright and overwhelmingly happy. He had caught so much of Makoto’s happiness and maybe so many others that it had slipped into his voice. Daiki was the sun, sometimes too hot, too bright but always meaning well.

 

Daiki was yellow, every facet about him even when he was cold and unwelcoming.

 

“And I’m navy with dots of yellow?”

 

“Pinpricks.”

 

Makoto closed his eyes, tried to imagine what that would look like in a voice. Dark, obviously. Wavering in its attempts to be happy. The yellow must have been from Daiki or maybe as a child Makoto’s voice was colored yellow too and all that sighing and returning, he was only left with dots in the darkness.

 

He wanted to shake off this conversation. He didn’t want to think how much he’d become poison or if he’d always been poison and Sousuke was just there to help release the venom buried within him. Makoto glanced down at the plant. He admired the lavender leaves of the succulents that faded into a cool teal. The color was not as rich as the foreign waters held within Sousuke’s eyes, but they were the same—beautiful. Staring at them, he found it strange that someone would have a plant as an offering. His hand reached out and brushed the smooth side on one of the leaves, small and round the size of the pad of Makoto’s thumb. He wondered if the color would rub off and give his flesh its gorgeous hue if he touched it enough.

 

They sat side by side, enjoying the quiet company. Together they watched over the dead. _What was this strange peace?_ Makoto wanted to ask. It was like he was sitting besides Daiki after a long shift had ended and they were too tired to talk but liked the presence of the other, slipping into that friendly and comfortable silence. If someone passed by, they would probably look like old friends visiting a grave.

 

Makoto watched from the corner of his eye the stranger. Most of his back was straight in its posture except for the gentle curve from his shoulders to his head as he leaned forward. His hair was unkempt, only combed with his fingers from the way some locks that would not lay flat. His gaze shifted to the paint splattered across his fingers and even coating the tips of some of his nails. He watched the dark hair fell in a gentle cascade as he crooked his head to the side and look over at Makoto too.

 

His eyes grew wider, embarrassed for starring and quickly lowered his gaze to fall onto the incense sticks again.

 

“What?” the man asked.

 

“Sorry,” he apologized instead. He reached up and touched the tip of his burning ears, hoping the cold of his fingertips would calm him down again. Maybe company was a bad thing after all.

 

“You don’t need to apologize.”

 

Makoto turned his head back hesitantly and locked onto those tranquil eyes filled with a melancholy peacefulness. He felt the layers peel, the pressure of words pushing against Makoto’s lips, wanting to tell this stranger everything—all the problems built up within him, bricks piled so high it could scrap the clear blue skies. But, the desire of confession and the teal eyes that stared at him in his mind that warned him not to speak a word kept him silent. Dejected, Makoto let out a sigh, dropping his shoulders.

 

It was the slight breeze that made him open his eyes and really see what was in front of him. A paint splattered hand curled up into a fist, catching air and holding it in the smooth white palm of his hand. Makoto blinked. His heart raced as he felt a cold hand reach out and open up his palm. The curled fist placed on top and slowly opening.

 

“You don’t want these slipping away,” the stranger replied, his eyes lowered and focused on Makoto’s palm, blistered from the friction of the crutch handles.

 

The thin fingers, strangely warm to the touch folded his fingers close to make sure none of the air slipped out from their grasps. Makoto held the sigh in his hand and curled his fingers until it dug into his skin. He laughed weakly at first and when he continued laughing the tears trickled down his face. He needed to stop crying, he hadn’t cried for over ten years and yet after meeting Sousuke, that was all he could do. Cry and relieve the black void in his heart. He let go and he held on.

 

“I’m sorry,” he apologized again as he wiped the tears with ends of his sleeves. His lips still curved into a steady smile. “I shouldn’t be crying.”

 

“Why not?” the stranger asked with the same curiosity a child has when it received an answer it could not understand. They asked why as if it was the only world in their vocabulary and was thrilled whenever they could use it.

 

“It’s…embarrassing,” Makoto admitted.

 

“Why?”

 

“Crying isn’t strong.”

 

“Why?”

 

“Because emotions, they destroy you.”

 

Makoto noticed the man’s lips thin into a line as he tried to understand. Just answering him, racking his brain to find the answers to the whys had drained him and his tears had dried up instantly. The man’s expression didn’t change much besides a small squint or a slight arch of his brow.

 

“And what would the world be without feelings?” the stranger finally asked, lifting his eyes away from the tombstone and back at Makoto now. His eyes prodded Makoto for an answer the same way a child would, hungry for knowledge. But it was as if the answer this time was for Makoto. If Makoto knew the answer, then Makoto would know what to do with the burden in his heard that he held too tightly to.

 

It was like a man once asked him once in his dream: _Who are you?_

Makoto didn’t know the answer, but he was peeling away the paint that covered it up and finding it slowly.

 

What would the world be without feelings? He repeated it until it was the only words he could visualize as clearly as colors. And what gazed back were those hardened teal eyes and that weak and trembling smirk that was out of place on such a face whose nature was that of a sheepish young boy.

 

What would the world be like? It’d be cruel, evil, malevolent.

It would be worse than winter.

It would be hopeless.

And hopelessness, wasn’t that the worse a person could feel?

 

Makoto never answered the question, but the stranger didn’t mind. Instead, he said muffled, “Those were his favorite.” The wet lavender leaves secured between his forefinger and thumb felt tender and delicate suddenly as he let his eyes drift back to them. He never realized Daiki was a fan of plants. He never carried any of them around in his home or gardened in the small backyard space. The man must have read the thoughts in his silence because he continued, “I kept some in my house. He’d take care of them from time to time while I’m not home and he told me he started to like them.” The man crooked his head, letting his cheeks rest on his forearm. “They’re like people, he said. They’re all right on their own, but they need people from time to time to check on their water and make sure they’re not getting too much sun.”

 

 _What are you going to do without me_ _?_ he said.

You’ve changed, he said.

 _I was worried I would be following you,_ he said.

 

Just like taking care of people. Make sure they’re not sighing too much or overworking themselves. Makoto’s hands trembled as he continued holding onto the leaf with the same delicacy one would hold a newborn’s finger that curled around your own.

 

“What do you think he would say if the plants died even though he took care of it so well?” Makoto asked softly.

 

“He’d find a leaf and plant it in the soil and watch it grow again,” the man replied casually with the same peaceful tone he had from the beginning.

 

He slowly released the plant from his grip and a wistful smile crossed his face. _Yeah, that’s exactly what he would do,_ Makoto thought. That was what made him so great as a paramedic, saving lives despite it trying to be hopeless. Makoto could recall those moments while they were on call saving people who by textbook would have been long dead. And his dying action was giving Makoto life, letting him start over and start over with the hopes that he’d be happy as he was before. His voice was yellow, Daiki was happy enough.

 

Looking over his shoulder, he saw the magenta and orange cast of the sky as the sun began to slowly set inch my inch, falling faster than it rose from the horizon of the world. “Time sure has gone by quickly.”

 

The man nodded as he got up, brushing the dirt from his jeans. He had been crouched for so long, his legs had gone numb and the pain had dulled. He quickly tried to get up as if he was perfectly fine, but it was the brash movements that had the pain shoot up and made him choke out a cry. His hand flew to his thigh, gripping over the bullet wound. Makoto hissed with narrowed eyes, breathing in and out, trying to ease the sting.

 

“Here.”

 

Makoto looked up and saw the outstretched hand, ready to help him up. He stared at it for a moment. After Daiki’s death, it was strange seeing so much friendliness stream out from one person. He gladly took the helping hand, feeling ease and surprise as the smaller man pulled him up.

 

“Thank you,” he breathed. “I’m Makoto. Tachibana Makoto, Daiki’s partner.”

 

A kind smile gracefully crossed the stoic face and the blue eyes splashed with the same life of lapping cold water on a hot day. “Nanase Haruka,” he introduced himself, “Daiki’s brother.”

 

“Brother?”

 

“Half brother actually,” he clarified. “Same mother, different fathers.”

 

Makoto stood in front of the Shidehara gravestone in stunned silence. And suddenly, he could see small peaks of resemblance in the way he stood with one hand tucked in his pocket and the way he lifted his head to look up at the sky, and the way when he smiled it opened up his face, and the way when he looked at Makoto, he saw a voice that was meant to be yellow but was hidden in navy.

 

“I didn’t see you at the funeral,” Makoto quickly commented. For some reason, there was desperation, as he tried to cling to this half brother, this person who was half-Daiki and not.

 

“I was abroad and couldn’t make it back. There was a gallery opening that my manager didn’t let me out of. That’s why I came here.” His eyes lowered, ashamed that he couldn’t attend a funeral because of work.

 

“Oh,” was all Makoto could find himself to say.

 

Nanase Haruka said his goodbye and made his way down the steps. With graceful steps he made his way down the path to the entrance of the cemetery. Makoto watched the figure and saw Daiki’s shoulders, Daiki’s step. It was when Nanase Haruka stopped and turned around that the image of his partner disappeared. “Your voice,” he said loud enough for Makoto to hear without bothering other visitors. “It reminds me of stars.”

 

 

• • •

 

 

He flexed his leg, back and forth. There was a gentle pain, but the muscle was healed again according to Doctor Etsuko. The crutches were gone, collecting dust in the closet, hopefully never to be used after this. The days passed and life slipped its warm arms around him. Makoto started swimming and eating and walking about the city again. He called home more often and talked to Ren and Ran. They gushed about their days and fought over the phone. Makoto kept quiet, but he didn’t feel silenced. He felt the gentle drift of his life through their clamoring words.

 

He started going back to school, trying to get a medical degree and become a doctor instead of stay a paramedic. Books lay scattered, more medicine and procedures to remember. His glasses rested on the bridge of his nose and a pen cap tucked between his teeth as he underlined important concepts and words.

 

He outlined as Ren talked about the new video game and dad’s newfound hobby of building a koi pond. Of course, the plan like all other plans were just musings and under mom’s chiding, it would never come to fruition. Ran exclaimed her first win at a local swimming competition, fastest backstroke swimmer. Makoto laughed, it seemed like that was the swimming style that ran in their blood. She wanted to race him when he goes back home someday. He teased that by the time the whistle blew and she arched back into the water, he’d be done with a lap. But he promised he’d swim with her. He promised everyone.

 

He was starting over, collecting the pieces by himself for himself and sought the gentle peace that Nanase Haruka and Shidehara Daiki carried in their veins.

 

Hanging up, he glanced out the window from the comforts of his bed. It was winter now and the first snow of the season now fell. He took off his glasses and placed it as a bookmark between the pages of his biochem book. Makoto pulled his sweater closer to his body, keeping the heat in. The snowflakes fell gently and quietly, covering the dirt and grime of the city with the pure white blanket. He breathed and saw his breath fog up the glass. His lips pursed, it would probably be a bad idea to go outside and take in the winter.

 

As his green eyes watch the season in a daze, a heavy knock fell on his door. He looked at the alarm clock on his nightstand and noticed that it was pretty late. He wondered who it could be. The knock rapt against the steel door repeatedly, soon becoming a pound. His heart began to beat with the same rhythm.  
  
“Coming,” he called.

 

He didn’t anticipate himself running to the door, being pulled towards the cold. He twisted the bolts and took off the chain of the door and finally opened it. A heavy body slumped forward, a sweaty forehead pressed in the curve of his neck and his shoulder. It was a draft of the freezing air and the scent of rich earth and musk that made his throat close up. His heart raced. There was an unfamiliar sound, a sound of a man trying to catch his breath as he cried.

 

“Please, Makoto. Please, I need you. Help me.” Supported in his arms, Sousuke carried the burning kingdom to his door and asked for his aid. He pulled his body away and saw the blood, red on his hands, smeared on his shirt. One glance and Makoto knew it wasn’t Sousuke’s blood. But the red was smeared all over his sweater now as Sousuke had clung to him, never had he seen him tremble so much, shaking. It was watching the earth move and sway a tree with gnarled and knotted roots that had broken and lifted the path of the sidewalk along the street.

 

Makoto held the face in his hands and locked his gaze with Sousuke’s. He held the cold in his hands, dug his nails into his cheeks to steady the rage of winter. And there was only one logical thing to say when one was met with a blizzard knocking on one’s door.

 

“I'm here. What do you need me to do?”

 

Makoto would take in the cold, take in the snow and watch it melt under his embrace.


	20. Chapter 20

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They were streaks of color in the gentle drift of the snow. Sousuke’s blood smeared hands, now dried and flaking to the touch, gripped Makoto’s, digging his nails into Makoto’s palm as he dragged the other along. The cold snapped at their heels. Makoto’s heart raced, as they ran down the long stretched. He was dragged down as Sousuke stumbled, slipping on the thin coat of ice on the pavement. If someone had passed by, had missed the blood that stained parts of their clothes and parts of their interlocked hands, they probably looked like children, running out onto the street with hearts thumping at excitement.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Think of this as a thanksgiving present! I think this chapter is one of my favorites that I have written so far.   
> Also, virtual make out if anyone can catch the Kurt Vonnegut reference thrown in here!
> 
> Comments, feedback, reviews, any/all thoughts are welcome! Love you lots!

They were streaks of color in the gentle drift of the snow. Sousuke’s blood smeared hands, now dried and flaking to the touch, gripped Makoto’s, digging his nails into Makoto’s palm as he dragged the other along. The cold snapped at their heels. Makoto’s heart raced, as they ran down the long stretched. He was dragged down as Sousuke stumbled, slipping on the thin coat of ice on the pavement. If someone had passed by, had missed the blood that stained parts of their clothes and parts of their interlocked hands, they probably looked like children, running out onto the street with hearts thumping at excitement.

 

Makoto breathed out, his breath turning into vapor in the cold. A white trail of his breath slipping and left behind, fading to the inching darkness behind them.

 

Sousuke didn’t say anything besides those words at the door. He just grabbed Makoto, moving with a prey’s quickness and dragged him into the cold world, as he had always done, will always do and drag him back into the warmth of a room—any room. It was warm so long as they were still human, still flesh and bone and felt their racing hearts beat and sound against each other through their skin.

 

They were back at Shark House. Four men stood at the door, the outline and flash of guns tucked in the waistband of their pants as they moved aside. They greeted Sousuke with the attentiveness of soldiers. Heels clicking together, backs rimrod straight and bows so low and so perfectly parallel to the ground that it looked like they were wound up toy soldiers whose times were up with the clicks of their gears. Sousuke didn’t acknowledge them as he usually would. He was impatient, pushing open the door with one arm and tugging Makoto in.

 

Shark House didn’t offer him the warmth he thought he’d receive, but then again, Sousuke had collapsed on him with blood on his hands and dragged him here. Warmth should be the last thing he should have expected. Taking a step in and drinking in the sight, the temperature dropped quickly and rapidly, freezing faster and stingingly colder than the world outside.

 

Surely, this was a scene from a film. Hunched over the booths and collapsed across the bar counter, a handful of Sousuke’s men—Samezuka men—were fatally wounded. Red bloomed across some of the white shirts, some black pants had patches that seemed darker in color than that of their slacks. Bandages were messily wrapped and applied. And if they were not injured, they were trembling, shaking as they tried to flick the metal flint of their lighters, lips quivering as they tried to take a large swig of their drinks, voice cracking as they consoled their brethren.

 

This was what Sousuke wanted him to do. It was clear. He was desperate. But Makoto was only a man with above average medical knowledge and skill than all the men in the room combined. There was too much blood and not enough hands and this all seemed too familiar—of course, not familiar in the sense that he had seen this before, but he had heard of it from his grandfather or great uncles whose hearts hardened and eyes steeled as the memories of the past slipped back from the back of their mind, involuntary.

 

This was a snapshot of a war, of soldiers wounded and if Makoto stared long and hard enough, at each injury, each man in the room, he wouldn’t be able to tell someone if their side was winning or losing.

 

People were just dying, and so it goes.

 

“Why aren’t you calling the ambulances? Sousuke, they need to go to the hospital,” Makoto commented, urgency in his voice. His mind had already set up a triage as his eyes swept across the room. The hand that was being gripped by the other man itched with familiar procedure from the past three years.

 

The man rubbed his face, slid it up to his hair and pulled the short strands taut, tugging at it with such strength that Makoto feared the hair follicles would loosen in its hold and fall out by the bunches. “I can’t. They’ve all got bounties on their heads. The hospital will ask for paperwork and insurance and they’ll be recorded and it’ll alert--” Sousuke spoke quickly, agitated, explaining how saving his men’s lives would not save them at all. He turned his head back to Makoto, eyes softening and tired. “Please. I know I can’t…I know this is impossible but--”

 

He doesn’t even need to say the words.

He doesn’t even need to give him those desperate and wild eyes.

He doesn’t even need to hold onto his hand and drag him out here, show him the scene and ask again.

Makoto would help as he always had. Saving, protecting, all of that had always been hardwired within him. It wouldn’t change now, even when who he’s about to save now could kill him in the future without hesitation.

 

He slipped his hand out of Sousuke’s and took off his jacket, piling it on an unused table beside them. “We’re going to need to set up a triage.” His bit down on his lower lip as he glanced at Sousuke, questioning how stable he was to look at wounds and determine their severity. “But I need to know if you’re okay.”

 

He brought his hands to Sousuke’s shoulders, holding him still, grounding him as they locked eyes, stilling his movements. “Are you okay?” he asked slowly and clearly. Makoto saw a man breaking down behind those blue eyes, a man scrambling to cross a collapsing bridge, regret piggy-backing on his conscience now so more than ever.

 

And it was one word the left his lips. No, not a word, a name. And the image of the desperate man before him, the one who seemed out of place and out of his skin made sense.

 

“Uozumi,” he croaked.

 

Makoto didn’t have to ask.

Makoto didn’t have to see.

He just knew.

 

“Take me to where he is.”

 

Sousuke nodded, turning and briskly walking to the back of the bar where most of the men were gathered. Makoto scanned their faces, their bodies. Nothing but scratches and he breathed a little easier, scratching out less bodies he would have to attend to and more that could—if willing—help him in setting up the sectors and buy some items later.

 

The man rested his hands on a few shoulders and they parted for him as easy as the red sea in scuffed and wrinkled black suits. Makoto couldn’t find Uozumi in the crowd, but it was when he walked in and reached the booth, he saw Sousuke’s wingman laid out on the table. The familiar face was contorted in pain, tears cleaning the grime and dust on his face. His hair clung to his forehead sheen with sweat. His shirt was ripped open, a bunched up—once white—towel pressed to the wound. Makoto’s eyes flickered to the slender hands that placed pressure on the gaping open cut that tore across his abdomen. He was surprised by the glare he received from narrowed eyes the color of rich amethyst crystals. His mouth turned into a sneer at Makoto. The man didn’t stare very long, his attention returning to Uozumi when he let out a painful hiss.

 

“Move,” Makoto ordered, pushing bodies aside that seemed dubious of his presence, but didn’t eye him with so much disdain as the one holding the rag did. He slipped into the other side of the table. He could see the gash peeking from underneath the towel. “How long has he been like this?” Makoto asked.

 

“Ten minutes, maybe longer,” the man across from him answered, silent rage lacing his words.

 

Ten minutes and a shallow cut would have been nothing. Makoto’s hands reached forward to the towel. The angry man flinched, pressing harder on the wound causing Uozumi to lurch and choke back a scream.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“I need you to move that,” Makoto answered, his voice steady and professional. It was the same tone he used to hysterical family and friends of the patient. “I need to see how bad it is.”

 

“Are you fucking blind?” The man’s knuckles turned white as he gripped the towel tighter, the soaked blood pooled out from the cloth and spilled over his hand. “It’s bad!” His free hand waved over the body, the sight of the blood smeared all over his chest, the large stain from the unbuttoned shirt.

 

“I need you to move so I can see what I need to do,” Makoto repeated more stern this time.

 

The man with the amethyst colored eyes flickered up to Sousuke who stood beside him. Makoto followed too. The teal eyes rested steady on the man between them. “Minami, do as he says. He’ll save him.”

 

Perhaps that last line was too confident for Sousuke to say right then.

But, the way he swallowed thickly, let his Adam’s apple bob along his throat, the way he closed his eyes for a brief moment to regain whatever composure he could, it seemed as if in those silent ticks of moments, Sousuke was praying, praying for Makoto to be the god that he wished he could be.

 

Minami tisked. His head sharply turned to look back at Makoto, jaw clenched until the vein along his jugular was visible. His eyes narrowed to slits, and his fingers curled still not letting go. Sousuke called out his name again, an order unspoken but snaked in through his tired voice. Minami glanced down at Uozumi whose face was dangerously pale. “If you fuck up, if he dies, I swear to hell I’ll finish the fucking job that those assholes of the 5th left behind.” He finally released his grip and slammed his hands on the table, stirring Uozumi as it jostled, and got up. He clasped his hands around Sousuke’s neck, dug his fingers into his throat. Makoto glanced from the corner of his eye, but kept most of his concentration on Uozumi, lifting the towel off.

 

“If Uozumi dies, I’m going to burn you alive too.” Minami stomped forward, pushing Sousuke aside by knocking his shoulder back with his own and moved away from the group.

 

Carefully peeling away the cloth, Makoto assessed the gash. Blood pooled and he saw the deep slash of his skin and estimated how much blood he lost in this span of time—ten minutes. Ten minutes and this kind of wound. Makoto figured close to forty percent of loss blood. He heard the heavy breathing, the quick heart. He’d need fluids and stitched up quickly. His mind racked for solutions, alternatives of the lack of medical equipment and supply.

 

And that’s when he started rattling off the things he’ll need. Find it, buy it, steal it, bring it. Do what needs to be done. That was Makoto’s resolve. The man in the black suits stared at him, confused, bewildered by his sudden shouts.

 

“Now!” Makoto yelled, his patience wearing thin now. The group dispersed. Some ran to the kitchen to rummage for some alcohol, others searched for the first aid kit that would have to do for now, a lighter. Others dashed outside running to buy alternative solutions or maybe even steal some from clinics nearby.

 

 

 

As he started to do his work, Makoto noticed he was suddenly alone with just Uozumi on the table. The eyes opened lazily as he felt cold gloves slip over his skin. Makoto noticed him drifting in and out. He was awake now and he was staring at Makoto’s half covered face. Makoto’s green eyes crinkled as he smiled. “You’re so quiet this time compared to when we first met.” The talk was light, meant to keep the patient’s mind off of the injury.

 

Uozumi’s lips lifted and fell in his attempt to smile. “Well, dying makes you reconsider what you want your last words to be. I sure don’t want mine to be something like fucking dick or motherfucking ass.”

 

Makoto laughed, a breathless laugh that warmed the facemask he had on. As he slowly worked his stitching, he thought of another question that would keep Uozumi preoccupied and a gage for Makoto to test how lucid he was while he worked. “Tell me what your home was like.”

 

“Home?” Uozumi breathed.

 

“Yeah, home. Where are you from? Start with that.”

 

“Kobe,” he said. His eyes fluttered close and a smile passed his lips. “I lived in Kobe with my mom and younger sister. We used to go to the beaches a lot when we were still small and whenever my mom was able to take a day off of work. Sometimes, we even went at night. It was cold, the water was always cold at night, but it was worth it.”

 

Makoto listened. Uozumi Takuya from Kobe lived with a younger sister and his single-mother. His father was out of the picture. He knew he wasn’t dead, just up and left them. Uozumi didn’t remember though, still too young to keep memories catalogued. But, he didn’t feel compelled to find him. His mother was enough. He remembered her warm smile and the tender hands that cupped his face. He said she always smelled like fresh fruits. He wish he remembered now what shampoo she had always used so he could buy it now, but he couldn’t, especially not after the whirlwind of her death. Uozumi recalled learning his mother’s fate coming home from work late at night from her job as a waitress at a restaurant. It was a drunk driver that took her and the social service that divided him and his sister apart, packed their bags neatly and shoved them into foster care. Uozumi never found his sister. She must have changed her name, he digressed momentarily.

 

Makoto asked how he ended up in Samezuka. Uozumi smiled, a drunken smile.

 

“Sousuke, Sousuke found me beat up in the alley way behind this computer shop and maid café in Akihabara. He asked if I wanted to die.” Uozumi laughed and hissed at the jolt of pain. “Forgot I can’t laugh. Sorry, Tachibana-san.”

 

Makoto waved it off, placing one gloved palm on his stomach to still the movements as he continued threading close the skin.

 

“I told him I wanted to die. There was nothing left. No family, no job, barely skimming with school, I was worthless. And he said good and brought me here.”

 

The brunette stilled. “But you said you wanted to die. Why would he…”

 

“He said…” Uozumi trailed, trying to find the words again, “He said Samezuka is a Russian winter. Enter it and don’t expect to come out alive. You’re basically signing your death certificate and leaving the date empty for the heads to fill in.” A silence drifted before Uozumi quickly added, “Well, isn’t all life like that though?”

 

Makoto blinked a few times before he continued. By half and hour and face beaded with sweat, he was done. He pressed his fingers to Uozumi’s wrist, counted to check his heart rate, see color ease back into his body. He wasn’t fully okay, but it would have to do for the time being. Uozumi was sleeping now, tired from talking and drained from flipping through all those memories. Makoto breathed out as he tugged his mask down to his neck and slowly moved to find other category one patients—those like Uozumi who were severely injured and could be saved. It was in this search that the chill of a voice against his ear startled him.

 

“You destroyed him.”

 

He turned on his boots and faced Minami again. The glint of the purple eyes glared at him. “I just saved him. He’s stabilized for now.” The professional tone coated his words despite his pounding heart.

 

“Not Uozumi. The boss.”

 

His heart stilled dangerously in place. “What do you mean?”

 

“He was never this emotional and irrational before. You fucked up his mind and you were the one that made him do this tonight. He led them out there and only these many came back. The rest are being tossed into mass graves and probably filled over with concrete somewhere as we speak.” Each sentence brought a poke to his sternum, a push of his shoulder, pushing Makoto back and back. It was like flicking away bugs that became too bothersome, but with more aggression.

 

Makoto’s grip on the medical toolbox tightened in his grab as he tried to remain calm. He didn’t need this, not now. “Is that it?” he asked squaring his shoulders. “If that’s all you have to say, then please leave me alone for now and let me take care of those who are still alive.”

 

Minami stepped back, the scorn still layered heavy on his face as he took a step back and pivoted to rejoin Uozumi’s side. When his back was turned, Makoto closed his eyes and breathed out, exhaling the nerves. In his breath, he wondered where Sousuke was, wondered if he was still frazzled and trembling as he appeared that night, but he waved it away and began to attend to the others.

 

 

 

As he stitched and swabbed, bandaged and formed slings for wounds and broken bones, Makoto was rewarded with stories and memories that slipped from the men’s tongues. There was a boy from Hokkaido, a 30 year old from Sendai. There was a man who had no home, but found he loved Kyoto. They shared stories of lovers they left behind, a girlfriend who was pregnant with his first son. There was a memory of a father sharing with his son a beer way before he was of age, or the time during their high school days, while in the middle of a quick fuck, his girlfriend’s parents came home and he had to jump out the house window to avoid being seen, jumping over fences naked before he could find a proper place that was out of sight to put his clothes on again. There were stories of being homeless for months, starving until they could see stars even when the sun was out, or a withdrawal from a drug going bad or even being beat up because fighting kept them feeling alive. He listened as he mended them. The stories rolled and crashed with the same strength and speed of waves, rising to a swell of fondness and crashing to the same shore, the same hopeless sandy land.

 

And Sousuke standing there, digging and brushing and picking up the broken shells and taking them back with him.

 

 

 

Makoto finished tending to all the physically injured for over 5 hours. He stripped off his 30th pair of gloves and tossed them in the trash. He tugged his facemask off and pushed it in there too. Adrenaline of the stories and the speed of his work began to crash slowly. His neck felt stiff, his fingers cramping and his legs ached and a bit sore, reminding him of his sprint here with Sousuke.

 

 

His green eyes flickered, swept over each face. His lips curved into a thin frown when he couldn’t find him. Makoto figured he might have gone to his quiet office to regain his sanity and peace of mind again. As he made his way up the stairs, one of the men called out to him.

 

“Tachibana-san, are you looking for the boss?”

 

Makoto half-turned, his hand still resting on the pipe railing of the stairs. The boy had smooth silver hair, cut into a blunt bowl cut, his arm was nestled in a makeshift sling and the bandage wrapped around his eye—Aiichirou Nitori from Miyagi. He smiled and nodded. “Is he not in his office?”

 

The boy shook his head and pointed to the hallway that led to the back. “He’s in the old freezer room. Seventh door on your way down.”

 

“Thank you,” Makoto answered. He made his way to where Nitori guided. His hands felt clammy and his heart raced, not sure what to expect in the freezer room and why Sousuke would find comfort there in the cold. The hallway was long and white. The fluorescent lights that illuminated the way made his eyes strain from the strangely clean corridor. He counted the steel doors as he made his way down.

 

The seventh door, the one to the old freezer room was cracked open slightly. Makoto peered from outside, making out what was in there before pushing it open. He saw Sousuke’s back, hunched over as he sat on a wooden crate, shaking and a soft cry echoing in the room. His fingers placed against the cold of the door, he pushed it open gently. He took hesitant steps towards this new man, this crumbling man, a man he had seen appear before himself.

 

It was instinctive, reaching out, sliding his arms over the curve of his back, reaching over Sousuke’s shoulder. There was a sharp intake, a panic cry that escaped his lips before Makoto murmured into his hair that it was him, it was okay as he pressed his body flush against Sousuke’s broad back. His arms that held himself trembled.

 

“Minami says I’m bad for you,” Makoto dropped. One arm remained folded, pressed over his chest. The other reached up and smoothed out the mussed short hair, some strands congealed with blood. He figured all the blood on Sousuke now was Uozumi’s blood. _Did he carry him here?_ The comment made the trembling and the cries stop. “He says I made you emotional.” Makoto closed his eyes and laughed once. “But, you know, being emotional, it’s not bad.” That was what he found his resolve in with Nanase Haruka as they sat crouched at Daiki’s grave. “Emotions make us human. And I’m glad I did that to you, I’m glad.”

 

They stayed like that for a while in silence. Sousuke didn’t say anything, didn’t move. He was frozen to Makoto’s gentle and soothing touches. When he shifted, his eyes trailed to the blood splatter across his face, the trail that trickled down his neck and around the exposed skin of his chest.

 

“We should clean you up,” he said. There wasn’t a towel or a sink in there. He would have to go to the sink from the bathroom near the entrance of the hallway and wet a towel from there. “Stay here. I’ll come back.” Makoto didn’t know why he said it. Sousuke would probably not move even if he told him to. He quickly walked out and made his way to the bathroom.

 

Five minutes later he slipped back into the room, a damp towel in one hand, a clean shirt one of the guys offered in the other. Makoto walked over and faced opposite Sousuke. He crouched down on his knees and began to unbutton the shirt slowly. His eyes flickered to Sousuke’s face, his eyes dead and familiar, blinking mechanically as Makoto had done as he lied in his bed for days on end without the desire to get out, bones feeling heavier than lead if he even thought about trying.

 

Makoto pushed the shirt off, slipping one arm out of the other. He picked up the towel and began slowly to wipe the splatter on Sousuke’s face, tender and careful, pushing back the short hair that swept across his forehead and making it down his cheek to the sharp curve of his jaw.

 

“Uozumi lost a lot of blood,” Makoto began as he slipped the towel down his throat. “It was a good thing you came to me when you did. Any later and he could have lost too much blood that some fluids and stitching could not repair.” Sousuke blinked and kept his silence. The towel moved across his width of his shoulders, sinking into the curve of his collarbone, trailing over the black tattoo that spread across his left chest.

 

“If you had brought me in a few weeks back, I don’t think I would have saved him,” he replied. “Uozumi would be like your Daiki right? I think I would have let him bled out as revenge,” he admitted. This stirred Sousuke briefly. His eyes widened for a second before falling back to their empty stares.

 

Makoto finished wiping off the blood on his chest and dropped the towel onto the floor. His hands trailed up to Sousuke’s lips, cupped the side of his face with one hand and drew light and feathery circles on the rough stubble peppered cheek with his thumb. As he lifted himself from off the floor, his other hand slid up Sousuke’s thigh, up the smooth skin of his chest and held his shoulder in his grip.

 

He leaned in, his forehead resting on Sousuke’s, still damp. His green eyes locked with the teal of the other man’s, searching for life in those pupils. His words brushed over Sousuke’s dried and cracked lips with a gentle breath. “If you’re going to try to make the world right by going on some suicidal mission like tonight, I won’t let you. I’m not going to let you die Sousuke Yamazaki. You owe me that.”

 

Maybe it was the life breathed into him with the kiss that Makoto pressed in against Sousuke’s lips, languid and slow.

Or maybe, winter was finally ending, snow melting with the clouds disappearing and the blue skies peeking through like unfurling ribbons.

Or maybe, instinct stirred within him, moving his body like strings of a marionette.

 

 

Whatever it was, Makoto felt soft touches press against the small of his back, delicately pulling him in.


	21. Chapter 21

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The lips that kissed him disappeared and his head dropped so that his sweat drenched forehead was pressed against a shirt made of thin cotton. Sousuke couldn’t make out its color. It looked black with his head buried against it, both pulled to Makoto’s body with a delicate hand that rested on the back of his matted hair, and Sousuke’s own fingers pulling the chest to him. Whatever the color was, it was dark and black now. He held onto the folds of the abyss made possible by this embrace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's a bit short but I wanted something up since there hasn't been anything for quite some time. I'm done with the semester so updates will (hopefully) be more frequent. Hope you enjoy this chapter. Comments, feedback, any thoughts are very much wanted and appreciated!

The lips that kissed him disappeared and his head dropped so that his sweat drenched forehead was pressed against a shirt made of thin cotton. Sousuke couldn’t make out its color. It looked black with his head buried against it, both pulled to Makoto’s body with a delicate hand that rested on the back of his matted hair, and Sousuke’s own fingers pulling the chest to him. Whatever the color was, it was dark and black now. He held onto the folds of the abyss made possible by this embrace.

 

Sousuke felt Makoto nose his hair, felt the tender weight of his head resting on top of his own. Makoto’s fingers carded through his hair, tugging at a few locks, untangling and scraping away the dried and congealed blood. Uozumi’s blood. Yasushi’s blood and Sharaku and Shino’s. He was sure there were other names, but his mind would not let them surface anymore. He couldn’t find their names, but he saw their faces in this darkness. Those tortured eyes. Those dying eyes. Fading with life, but remained intent on him with their heads sliced off slick and clean, bullets forming the darkest eye in the middle of their forehead, lined with Sousuke’s rage and their own fears of dying.

 

In the hellfire, Sousuke grabbed Uozumi who had initially pushed him back to save him and caught the edge of the sharpened blade to his stomach instead.

 

His heart galloped in his chest again, banging against his ribcage with the flurry of a wild bird desperate for freedom. _Let me go._ It echoed. _I don’t want to live in this body_. And to stop it from flying away, he pulled Makoto closer, trap his heart between their bodies.

 

“You need to clean yourself up,” Makoto said against his hair.

 

Sousuke nodded.

 

“You should go back to your apartment.”

 

Sousuke shook his head. He would if he could. How many times had that line crossed his mind in his life? Perhaps too many to count on just his fingers and toes.

 

“Mine then?”

 

He shook his head. He was too stained. He wouldn’t take step inside Makoto’s home again, he had resolved himself to that. The floorboards and the walls didn’t needed to soak up anymore of Sousuke’s world, didn’t need to whisper his secrets to Makoto at night as he slept soundly.

 

“You can’t stay here,” Makoto said, a bit concerned, a bit exasperated, the sound of a tired mother. He tried to recall in that brief moment his own mother’s voice. What did she sound like again? He had forgotten if she had hummed any songs as she paced about the room. What color were her eyes? What did she smell like whenever she pressed him to her bosom? All of her had become smoke and all that was left was an imitation of her scar branded across his own body as if what his mere existence was not enough of a reflection of her, of his father, of people who had slipped away as a consequence of his birth and the tragedy he seemed to spread like a drop of black ink on water.

 

“I’m staying at a hotel,” he answered, his voice coarse, dry and scratchy after crying.

 

“You should go. You need to shower and get a change of clothes too.”

 

The voices of the men outside drifted into the quiet sanctuary of the freezer room. Sousuke’s heart lurched into his throat, gripping it with a terrible and desperate command to stay. “I can’t,” he croaked. “I can’t leave my men.”

 

“What good are you now?” Makoto’s voice was cold. No, not cold. Not with the same bite when he told Sousuke to leave him that day in the hospital. Not with the same coldness that sharpened his words as he recalled his partner’s life and how he wanted to kill Sousuke as revenge. No, this wasn’t coldness but the voice of sound reason and a mind with clarity, a mind that Sousuke had long lost, though when he lost it he could not remember, like the same forgetfulness one has with losing their keys. One moment it’s in your hands or in a familiar spot around the house, and the next it’s not and no amount of recalling and scratching the side of your head could bring back the memories in between the moment you had it and the moment you realized you didn’t. Makoto became the memory in between.

 

“You think you can lead them trembling like this?” Makoto’s fingers stopped running through his hair and pushed it back, lifting Sousuke’s head from the folds of his shirt. The light greeted him, harsh and blinding. It took a while for him to adjust and when it did, Makoto’s green eyes stared at him. “You need to get yourself together before you destroy everything you’ve built here.”

 

The angel of a man whose wings Sousuke had ripped off, cocked his head to the side, blocking the light and all it became was a halo of light and the shadow of Makoto’s face looking down at him. A smile crooked on his lips, a new smile, a smile broken and chipped at the corners but strong, confident.

 

“I’ll help you,” he said as he began to slip on the clean shirt onto Sousuke, one arm at a time.

 

 

 

Sousuke let the water run from the showerhead, let it drench him from head to toe. With eyes lowered to the tiled floor, he watched as the flaky blood slip from his hair and the stains on his skin slide off and down into the drain. The crimson red of the blood only a dully muddied color. Placing his hands on the wall to steady himself, he breathed in and out. Everything sounded haggard and heavy. Breathing became difficult, closing his eyes longer than a brief blink proved more so. The image had burned itself onto the back of his eyelids, took up the black space and colored it with all the blood and the torn bodies by the construction site.

 

His fingers reached out for the knob and turned off the water. The sound of his breathing bounced off the tiles of the bathroom, but faintly, he heard Makoto humming, a song trapped in a cycle of loneliness.

 

He grabbed the towel from the rack and wrapped it around his waist. Pushing his hair back, Sousuke caught the shadowy reflection of himself in the fogged up mirror. With his forearm, he wiped away the condensation and what stared back at him was not Sousuke Yamazaki, or maybe it was. He looked tired and jittery and afraid. His eyes were heavy and his skin a sickeningly pale complexion.

 

He looked dead.

 

Sousuke wondered if Makoto saw that too.

 

Stepping out into the room, he caught Makoto sitting on the edge of the bed, folding up his shirt neatly despite it being drenched with sweat and stained. Sousuke sat down beside him, the mattress dipping with his weight. Makoto’s eyes flickered over to him and he smiled. “I borrowed one of your shirts. I hope you’re okay.”

 

For some reason, the comment sounded disjointed. _I hope you’re okay_ didn’t seem to fit with _I borrowed your shirt_. _I hope you’re okay_ seemed to refer to something else entirely. Maybe like seeing a massacre when he closed his eyes or having difficulty breathing or having his heart beat erratically to the point where he felt like it would give out and stop.

 

Sousuke wasn’t okay. He hadn’t been okay in a long, long while. And now, when he tried to admit that he wasn’t, that he was haunted and the image of a dead man, the words wouldn’t come like they never had since the beginning of their relationship.

 

It was a soft question, asked in an attempt to be polite and casual as hands continued to smooth out the wrinkles and pick at the dried blood. “What happened today?”

 

He shook his head. “I don’t want to…” Sousuke closed his eyes, closed it longer than a blink and the images resurfaced, ugly and bloated after years under the sea. His breath hitched and he squeezed his eyes tighter, hoping that pressure would push everything down again. “I can’t. It’s all I see. I don’t want to think about it more than I do.”

 

Makoto’s weight disappeared from his side. Sousuke heard his duffel bag with his clothes unzipping and slowly opened his eyes again. He watched Makoto rummage through the clothes as he tried to slow his heart rate before it burst in his chest, ready to take flight from its cage. “What are you doing?”

 

The man didn’t respond, so Sousuke continued to watch, letting his hands drop to his sides. After a few minutes, Makoto finally pulled out one of his black ties. He smoothed it and ran his fingers over the cool material before walking back to Sousuke again. “Makoto,” his voice trailing as the other stepped up in front of him and leaned in. He didn’t flinch or move away as Makoto slipped the tie around his eyes, slipping and tying it around and prodding the edges to make sure it was secure.

 

The darkness of the makeshift blindfold turned the images on the back of his eyelids into a imax theatre, surrounding even the periphery of his vision. His chest felt tense, his breathing panicked and ragged. Sosuke’s hands reached out, fumbled for the familiar body. Was he reaching out to Makoto or Uozumi?

 

“This is sensory deprivation.” Makoto’s voice sounded clearer, as clear as the echoing voice of the large sakura tree the first time around. His voice echoed as Sousuke and his men entered the damp and dark building and as he caught a glimpse of the old chiseled face of the second in command of Samezuka.

 

“Some people use this for therapy.”

 

Sousuke continued walking, kept his hand on the gun tucked in the back of his waist, kept it there as he continued walking forward with all the intent to kill, kill as many, kill as quickly. He walked disregarding the question if he’d make it out alive. He didn’t worry about that, just about making things right. Setting the world right. One rock at a time. One corpse at a time until he couldn’t anymore.

 

“Whatever happened to you today, it’s all you can see. So, I’m cutting off your vision.”

 

And yet, no one shot him, not until he was a breath away. And then, the bullets fell, the grunts and anger clashed. Blood spilled with the easy of turning on a faucet. And in the midst of it all, the man with the chiseled face and the narrowed eyes laughed as he walked out, sauntering with his hands in his pockets, whistling a song high and clear above it all.

 

And these were the parts Sousuke didn’t want to see.

 

His hands quickly lurched forward, grabbing onto solid arms. “Please, no. Take this off.”

 

Strong hands reached out and cupped his face. Lips crushed against his own. Makoto’s kiss felt like an act of resuscitation at the very moment he was gasping for breath. The scene against the darkness began to move quickly, the sound fading and dissolving into the sound of Makoto’s breath, Makoto’s heart, Makoto’s whispers. 

 

Whispering constantly, incessantly until it was repeated so often it rolled into one thin howl of a breeze whipping by his ear, _Don’t let the images haunt you._

 

Makoto’s nails dug into his skin, a displaced tree trying to root and cling to crumbling soil. His lips trailed delicate kisses, peppering them with the feathery lightness of flower petals drifting and brushing his skin, airy and light but soft. Sousuke would have thought the touches to be part of his dream, one that he had not seen in a long while, and had missed despite the cold chill he would wake up after it dissolved with his fading slumber, pierced and punctured by his mind stirring awake again. If he wasn’t clinging to him, feeling the sturdy flesh beneath his fingertips, the echoing heart that thumped soundly and steadily against his own, Makoto would surely be a dream, a dream wrapped in the darkness of a blind man.

 

Sousuke’s breath exhaled with the same trembling fear that still lingered in his body from the events of the night. His breathing was erratic, his heart pounding irregularly. He tensed as his eyes opened again, still in darkness.

 

Before panic could seize him, he felt the soft hands frame his face, felt it gently lift him his head. Even without the blindfold, he knew the green eyes stared at him with firm strength and steadiness.

 

“Sousuke, I need you to breathe.”

 

 _I am_ , he thought. He sucked in air and exhaled to prove that he was, in fact, breathing. But it was shallow and his head was becoming light, the solidity of Makoto’s body slowly faded as his fingertips grew numb. His heart hurt and if he closed his eyes again, he’d see Uozumi being cut open, dissected, blood pooling under his fingertips as he tried to hold the ripped open gash together as if human flesh was just wet clay that could be sealed by just smoothing over the surface with a run of his fingers.  

 

Makoto’s hands disappeared from the sides of his face. He felt his legs nudged apart and the brush of denim against damp legs. “When you see blood,” he began, “Think of me saving your life that night in the back of the ambulance.”

 

Uozumi disappeared from his sight and it was white and empty, a fresh blanket of snow, a large tree, a distant echo of sirens but no ambulance around. Flowers drifting and falling and piercing and Makoto’s voice echoing in the cavernous space.

 

The brunette’s fingers wrapped and pressed at the nape of Sousuke’s neck. They pulled him forward and he could smell the hint of fresh spring underneath the scent of sweat, mixed with his own smell of the hotel shampoo and soap.

 

“And when you see a smoking gun, think of our coffee runs those mornings after my shift.”

 

The dark barrel steam that drifted out of the freshly fired gun dissolved into his coffee cup, black and warm. He crooked his head and saw Makoto delicately holding it while nodding off into sleep.

 

Finally, he asked quietly, barely above a whisper. “What if I see winter eating away life?”

 

The fingers at the base of his neck moved up to where the tie was. Slowly the fabric grew slack and fell from his eyes and rested on his neck. Makoto smiled, his thumb rested on his cheek, drew lazy and uneven circular strokes. Sousuke didn’t realize he was brushing away his tears until one had slipped into his mouth and he tasted the salt.

 

"Think of tonight. Think of the snow right now." Tugging his shirt over his head, Makoto dropped it onto the floor. Sousuke watched Makoto’s body under the pale yellow hue of the light of the room rise and fall with every breath. He dimly made out the curving lines of the cage of his ribs under his lean muscle. Makoto took Sousuke's hands, brought them up to kiss each of them, tenderly and delicately. When his lips had touched all of them, had trailed down to the smooth skin of his wrists, Makoto pulled his hands forward to rest on the curve of his waist. He stepped in closer. "When you think of winter, think only of me."

 

Makoto kissed him again, letting his tongue slip and coax Sousuke's mouth apart. He deepened the kiss and parted briefly, a bit unwilling for the sake of breathing. He moved his kisses from Sousuke's mouth and let it trail down his neck, down his chest still damp from his shower.

 

The green eyed man toyed with the towel before undoing its tucked in hold with ease. His trail of opened mouthed kisses continued down further until it reached his base, his lips at the side and his hand already wrapped around him, stroking slowly. The sensation alone, the touch, had Sousuke’s eyes roll back into his head and his heart beating in his ears.

 

_Think only of him, he said._

Sousuke had been doing that since the beginning. What would change now?

 


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the country that sees the sun climb its slow steps down, down, down into the darkness of the world, Sousuke Yamazaki’s body became a new frontier, flesh and bone and mind and soul delicately standing on a trapeze of years of repressed trauma and seconds of undeniable pleasure given with skilled fingers and a warm mouth. Makoto Tachibana had wrapped his fingers around his cock, stroked it slowly with the same casual laziness as his lips that pressed themselves on his inner thigh until he reacted, growing hard and watching the ruffled brunette hair through half-closed eyes.

In the country that sees the sun climb its slow steps down, down, down into the darkness of the world, Sousuke Yamazaki’s body became a new frontier, flesh and bone and mind and soul delicately standing on a trapeze of years of repressed trauma and seconds of undeniable pleasure given with skilled fingers and a warm mouth. Makoto Tachibana had wrapped his fingers around his cock, stroked it slowly with the same casual laziness as his lips that pressed themselves on his inner thigh until he reacted, growing hard and watching the ruffled brunette hair through half-closed eyes.

 

“What kind of therapy is this?” Sousuke asked, words broken in breaths, disconnected by slow touches, agonizingly slow shifts and tender grazes of teeth against his skin.

 

Makoto hummed with his lips pressed against his thigh. His hands continued its rhythmic strokes, unhesitating as he thought. “Maybe therapy would be the wrong word,” he finally answered. “Fixation. Substitution.” He moved his head away and glanced up at Sousuke who caught his gaze through his closing vision.

 

Substitu—

 

His mind stopped, slipped its grasp on the word when he felt Makoto’s tongue drag along his hardened length now. The word dissolved into the black hole of his mind and his hands reached out and grasped Makoto’s hair, soft to the touch and easy to maintain his hold. A moan broke from the rumbles of his throat, his eyelids fluttering close. Sousuke’s eyes shifted underneath the darkness of his closed eyelids, saw spots of light in the black abyss after staring and straining for too long. He felt Makoto’s tongue swirl along the swollen head, lick up the pearls of pre-come that leaked out. Sousuke’s grasp tightened as his breath hitched feeling the warmth of Makoto’s mouth take in his cock.

 

His heart raced, pounding and alive. Blood flowed quickly through him, pulsed its way down, making him lightheaded with pleasure and senses overstimulated. Whatever blood that did manage to flow towards his head only made his body hot, his skin breaking out with red patches dusted over his neck and his cheeks as if he had run a mile in the cold drifting snow. Sousuke’s hips bucked into Makoto’s mouth, impatient now for the slow laps of his tongue and the pace. He could feel the fire bubbling in his stomach. Life coursing through his veins. Makoto’s touch and gentle scraps of his nails along his thighs thawing and chipping away at the ice that had eaten away at his limbs so long ago that they had always felt numb.

 

“Makoto. Makoto. Makoto,” he repeated, a hazy mantra, a prayer between each shallow breath. Sousuke forced his eyes to open again, his gaze lowered to focus on the sight of Makoto’s lips, pink and swollen taking him in to the hilt with nails sinking into his hipbones, digging into it until the pinch elicited a hiss that melted into another moan. “I’m gonna…” Sousuke breathed, ragged. “I’m gonna come.”

 

The green eyes caught onto his teal gaze. Makoto stops sucking then. Let his cock fall from his lips. Sousuke’s chest rose and fell heavy, out of a mixture of relief from the build up but also with insatiable desire, scratching from the inside, demanding its release.

 

Sousuke says his name again and he swears he hears his heart leave with the name. His grip on Makoto’s hair slackens and falls, brushing his thumb over his cheekbones, over the slick wet lips, lips he once coaxed smiles out of just so he could hold them in his memories with the same delicacy of picking sakura blossoms off branches and cradling them, making sure his human grip would not crutch them.

 

“Come here,” he whispered, his hands falling to Makoto’s shoulders, running them over every pulse point, grooves and dips along his neck and his collarbone.

 

Makoto followed, slid up flush against Sousuke’s body, let his hands wrap and curl around his neck. He felt the gentle heart beat against his chest again, a beat much steadier than his own that was banging and trying to break free. His kisses explored him, every inch until it reclaimed Sousuke’s lips again. The denim of his jeans grinding against his erection, releasing a hiss as he pulled away from those tender lips that tasted of him and a familiar heat he had forgotten.

 

With fingers used to moving on instinct, Sousuke was already unbuttoning Makoto’s jeans, slipping them under the waistband and tugging everything down. Desperation strung him along. Desperate to rid himself of the old skin that clung to him. Desperate to feel himself shift and move in Makoto. The desperation of a man moved with his own pleasure and his own fear. “I need you,” he whispered as his teeth grazed Makoto’s pulse point along his neck. He kissed and sucked until it left a mark.

 

 _I need you._ Each fiber of himself screamed as he let his hand cup Makoto’s ass and let a finger enter his hole, relishing the mewl that echoed in his ear as the brunette’s head fell, forehead resting on the crook of Sousuke’s neck and shoulder. The other man’s grip scraped against the nape of his neck, the space between his shoulder blades, running and digging his nails into his spine deeper and deeper with every curl of his finger, scraping against his walls.

 

 _I need you._ His fingers slicked wet as he pumped them in and out, stretching him and making him keen and dig his grips deeper until Sousuke felt that his fingers had rooted themselves in his veins and even the slightest of shifts and Makoto’s unpredictable twitch against him could cause him to rip him apart from the inside out.

 

 _I need you_ …He had teased him long enough, had stretched him enough, had let pleasure and deep moans rumble against his ears build up enough. Makoto’s breathing is ragged, panting and his talon for nails had loosened its grip. They hadn’t touched each other like this in so long, their bodies were foreign, each touch more electrifying than the first.

 

Sousuke didn’t realize his tongue had unfolded what his mind desperately clung onto, those words that rumbled within him. “I need you--” he choked. Even in his head, the sentence was cut off by a sound, a smell, a sharp dig of nails that made him take a sharp intake. This time, the words were cut off by Makoto sinking down onto him, sheathing him whole. The wind was knocked out of him, his slick fingers falling onto Makoto’s hips, digging themselves in.

 

Makoto breathed, waited as his body adjusted to him before he began to move.  He slowly lifts himself up before sinking down, repeating the motion and rocking. Once in a while, Sousuke would break the rhythm, as he had always done in their lives, and buck up, hitting the spot, making Makoto moan as he sank down. His grips tighten around Sousuke’s shoulder. Beads of sweat begin trickling down his neck, down the span of his chest.

 

He can’t take it anymore. His mind repeats the words in a flurry.

 

_I need._

_I need._

_I need._

 

Makoto should even feel it in his fingers, feel it in the way his thrusts rock up, meeting and the sound of skin against skin, lewd and loud in the room, only overwashed by the sounds of their heavy breaths in each others ear. Breathing so loud, reminding the other of the life they were holding, were rocking into.

 

As he catches his breath, Sousuke hears Makoto mewl, breathe out, “I’m so close.” His voice thick with pleasure. Sousuke had forgotten his close release earlier as Makoto wrapped his own pleasure around him. Their rhythm is breaking as the urge for relief drives them. Sousuke moves one hand and wraps it around Makoto’s cock, already dripping wet. He begins to stroke him too, wanting this to end, wanting this need to end, wanting to cut the strings that moved him before it choked Makoto too.

 

Sousuke’s the first to let go, his fingers digging into Makoto’s hips, stilling him as he climaxes. When he’s done, he continues to rock slowly, his hand still stroking. Makoto is close too. It doesn’t take long for the characteristically familiar hitch in his breath, and how his words are broken up as he repeats that he’s close, very close.

 

He pulls out slowly, let’s Makoto fall back onto the bed. The green eyed man laughs, the first ring of laughter in a very long time. Sousuke missed it, missed how relaxing it sounded, how unburdened it was. Makoto apologized in his tired voice as he let Sousuke wipe them down and clean them up.

 

 

 

 

They’re laying in bed together, the sheets pulled up to their chests. Makoto wrapping himself close to Sousuke, tangling his legs with his and resting his head on his chest. Sousuke’s running his hands through the long brunette locks, massaging the scalp. His body feels tired from the sex, from the weight of the day beginning to fall down on him, from the weight of his life and his sins being placed on the scale, tipping it in a way that the world already knew it would.

 

He’s flipping through the channels. The glow of the television set bright and straining that Makoto buries his face closer to Sousuke’s skin and pulls up the comforter to block the light. He lowers the volume just in case too, worried that the other would be wandering into the verge of sleep. There’s nothing on this late at night, except for late night talk shows, advertisements and a few unheard of movies. Sousuke settles on a news channel because the anchor looks familiar, like an old hookup. Nostalgia kept him on the channel.

 

The weather was going to get colder, more snow is going to fall.

Recent governmental policy has passed, several debates and discussions about the consequences.

Developments on an investigation at a night club situated in Ikebukuro. Police are expecting to make an arrest soon enough.

 

 _I need…_ The words surfaced again. His thumb pressed the button on the remote, silencing the woman, the television, the current events of the world.

 

Makoto shifted again when the straining television light was gone and left the room in darkness. Sousuke jolted at the chill of his fingers that brushed along the path of his sternum. Has his hands always been that cold?

 

“What’s wrong?” he asked. His voice sounded quiet, fading, a shout barely heard over a roar of crashing waves.

 

“Nothing,” Sousuke barely managed to reply. “Nothing’s wrong. You tired?” He asked, looking down but unsure where Makoto’s face was in this blindness. His hands ran up and down along Makoto’s back, making sure the body beside him was very much there, very much real, very much his.

 

“A little. Do I sound tired?”

 

“You sound…far.”

 

“I was thinking.”

 

“Thinking of?”

 

“I only got to kiss you once when you smoked.” A light breathy laugh escaped his lips. “Well…when you kissed me that first time around.”

 

Sousuke’s tongue curled in his mouth. It ran along the ridges that lined the roof and tried to remember what smoke tasted like and Makoto’s sudden thoughts on it. “And?”

 

“I kind of miss it.”

 

“Miss my smoking?”

 

“Miss the smell. You always smelled like smoke and coffee and it all seemed warm.” Makoto’s voice trailed off, but the tips of his fingers still brushed his skin, slowly and trailing light patterns on his chest. After the minutes passed, his strokes slowed and stilled. His breath slowed and exhaled softly. Even in the darkness, Sousuke knew Makoto had fallen asleep.

 

He stared at the ceiling of the room, though there was no difference of looking at it with open or closed eyes. It was pitch black darkness. Not even the light of the moon could pierce through the thick clouds and ease into the room.

 

_I need…_

 

Easing himself out of the bed, Sousuke pulled on whatever clothes he could find by touch. Slipping them on and grabbing his wallet and phone, he walked out of the room, craving whatever warmth Makoto had found long ago.

 

 

 

 

His face is blotchy red again as he walked outside, face exposed to the chill of the winter. He should have dressed warmer, of course, he should have dressed with some sort of light on. Instead, he’s in his black sweatpants, a thin and well worn out blue tee, and his familiar track jacket. Sousuke breathes out, a thin white wisp. His tongue runs over his cracked and dry lips, ready to taste what he had quit so long ago because Makoto missed it and he would do anything for the green eyed man.

 

Even go back on his word.

Even slipping back to bad habits.

 

Sousuke enters a convenience store a few blocks down from the hotel. It’s empty and the cashier greets him, tired and bored as he flips through the magazines and tabloids stocked in the store. Part of him wants to go straight to the register and get the pack of cigarettes, but his feet turn and he begins to wander the aisles, and occupy his time looking at snacks and drinks. He wastes time some more as he debates whether he should buy condoms and lubricant while he’s at it.

 

If he was going to go back on habits with Makoto, he might as well do it with utmost pleasure.

Who knows how much time he has left.

His tongue clicked with whatever clock ticked in his head.

 

Sousuke picked up the box, turned it over and read the label some more. He read their guarantee of the sensation as if nothing was there, the elasticity and durability. He put the box back on the shelf. _Maybe some other time_ , he thought.

 

Already missing Makoto’s body pressed flushed against him, Sousuke decided to get it over with. He walked up to the counter. The boy who had his elbow resting on the counter, eased up slowly. His eyes flicked up to Sousuke, still staring him with the same boredom that was laced in his tone.

 

“Pack of Marlboro and a lighter.”

 

The boy nodded as he made his way to the lineup and began to grab a carton. The bell alarm of the motion sensor at the front of the doors to the store rang. He welcomed the customer dully still, his eyes not even glancing over to see who it was. He placed the carton down and punched in the price.

 

Sousuke dug in his pocket, slipping out the money.

 

While he was counting out the change, another man stepped beside him and placed a pack of beers on the counter. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” the voice echoed. Sousuke glanced from the side and watched the other man pat himself down, trying to find his wallet. It seemed he was out of his luck because he sighed as he placed his hands on the counter and lowered his head. Sousuke heard a string of swears under his breath.

 

“Bad day?” Sousuke asked.

 

“Just got off work. You can say just getting home right now is enough for a bad day.”

 

Sousuke motioned to the cigarettes and to the six-pack. The boy didn’t react to the altruistic move as he added the beers to the receipt. He handed the money to the kid before grabbing the carton and peeling off the top. He hooked his finger on the plastic rings of the beers and pushed it towards the man. He looked up, looked at the pack being handed to him and to the Sousuke’s face. His eyes widened, startled.

 

“Here. To make the day less shitty.”

 

“…Thanks,” the man answered, suddenly cautious and wary. He took the cold pack of beers and followed Sousuke out.

 

He stopped at the front of the store, tapping free one loose cigarette and tucking it between his lips. His nerves were already on alert, his taste buds already prepared to be coated with the burning bitter taste. Sousuke tucked the carton in his jacket pocket and flicked the flint of the lighter until it caught and brought the flame to the filter, sucking on the cigarette until the filter turned red then black and exhaled out. The weight of the lighter in his hand felt heavy. He turned it between his fingers before slipping it into his pocket.

 

Sousuke closed his eyes, lifted his head back and let the smoke sink in, down his throat, swirl inside his expanding lungs and exhaled a steady stream of white smoke when he could no longer hold it in. His heart slowed. His body no longer sensitive to the cold.

 

Slowly opening his eyes, he noticed the figure still beside him.

 

“You having a bad day too?”

 

Sousuke shrugged as he tapped the end of cigarette, let the ash fall to the ground. “More or less.”

 

“You look like you want to talk about it.”

 

He lifted a brow, the old smirk tugging at his lips. “Really? That’s funny. Why’d you say that?”

 

The man ran his hand on the nape of his neck, his hair tied in a short low pony-tail brushed along the long fingers, fingers as long as Makoto’s, but thinner and more slender. It looked dainty and bleached clean. He zipped up the jacket to his black hoodie while he balanced the beers.

 

“Good gut feeling,” he said, flashing a smile.

 

Sousuke laughed as he held the cigarette to his lips again, his third inhale. “Might want to check that gut of yours. There’s only one person I talk to if I need to talk about anything.”

 

“Oh, girlfriend?”

 

“Boyfriend.”

 

The man breathed into cupped hands, trying to warm them up. “I’m sure the women of the world are nursing their broken hearts.”

 

He shrugged, exhaling a thin line of smoke again. Sousuke wondered in the cold air where the line of smoke ended and his own breath began. “Doesn’t matter to me.”

 

“Ah, gut feeling said you were cold.”

 

Sousuke snorted. “Funny, my boyfriend said I was warm.”

 

“What a weird boyfriend you have.”

 

The ashes fell steadily, black dots in the blanket of white on the concrete. Makoto was, in a way, weird. He was too nice. He was too compassionate. He was too understanding. He was too quick to adjust and move on. And Makoto, above all the others, perhaps knew him too well, had invaded his life too well, had eased himself into his veins until he writhed and settled into his blood stream too well.

 

Sousuke glanced down at the cigarette that he held between his fingers, ran his free hand over his eyes that still ached from crying earlier so easily. And the realization dawned upon him, almost hit him too fast that he almost began to laugh in front of the stranger.

 

“I also have another gut feeling,” the man said, breaking Sousuke’s thought. He was already beginning to walk with the beers swinging with his arms and jostling the cans—clinking them together.

 

“What?”

 

The smile flashed again. “We’re gonna meet again, real soon. Thanks for the beers.” The man turned to leave, whistling a tune with the happy step. It took a few minutes until he disappeared, rounding the corner and out of sight.

 

And only one thought lingered as Sousuke took a long drag.

 

_What weird teeth. Must be one of those cosplayers._

 

He licked his lips and dropped the cigarette onto the snow. He crushed the stub with his shoes as he began his trek back to the hotel. Sousuke forgot how good nicotine tasted. His hand stroked the lighter and ran a thumb over the smooth surface of the smoke carton, following the dips of the brand name.

 

It tasted so good. Why did he give it up in the first place?


	23. Chapter 23

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The sun did not rise.
> 
> Or perhaps it did, but the clouds were too thick for the rays of light millions and millions and millions of miles away to break through. Maybe the goddess Ameterasu grew tired of parting clouds. Perhaps, she, too, knew when to lift her arms above her head and let her eyelids flutter close and surrender to the darkness and the gloom and the biting cold of water turning to ice, of gentle breezes becoming sharpened knives against exposed skin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, it's been a long time coming, hasn't it?

The sun did not rise.

 

Or perhaps it did, but the clouds were too thick for the rays of light millions and millions and millions of miles away to break through. Maybe the goddess Ameterasu grew tired of parting clouds. Perhaps, she, too, knew when to lift her arms above her head and let her eyelids flutter close and surrender to the darkness and the gloom and the biting cold of water turning to ice, of gentle breezes becoming sharpened knives against exposed skin.

 

Sousuke Yamazaki rested his temple against the frosted window as he looked down at the ants of cars and people down below, braving the cold. He wasn’t sure if it was night or if it was morning. All he knew was that the sun did not rise, Makoto Tachibana’s soft breathing echoed in the room and the world turned as it always did whether or not he moved from his spot.

 

He began to flick the flint of the lighter as he tapped the bottom of the carton until a slim cigarette came loose. Sousuke tucked the stick between his lips and eyed the sparks from the lighter turn into a small flame. There was a breeze somewhere, he realized as he watched the small fire dance a bit too quickly, swaying from one side to the other dancing and curving with the wind. Blocking it with his hand, Sousuke curled and cupped the lighter and brought it to the filter. He sucked in until it caught and released it when he was done.

 

He exhaled after his throat tingled from the burn. The smoke swirled and drifted, disappearing in the dark room, so dark he could barely make out the outline of Makoto’s body in the bed, curled up and nestled in the sheets. The sight is familiar, but not.

 

Sousuke palmed his phone, turning it over and over in one hand. He waited, waited as he watched the people walk by whether leaving for work or going home or just wandering as human inclinations go. Waited, as he listened to Makoto’s dream escape him from his gently parted lips. Waited, as he stroked his chest lazily and felt the dip ad ridge of his scar beneath his thin t-shirt. Sousuke Yamazaki stopped touching the wound, let his finger rest steadily into the concaved seal hole a few centimeters away from his heart. He took another long drag, long enough that his chest expanded like a balloon, lungs filled only with what had been burned. Only when he felt a bit lightheaded and his chest too constricted to hold the smoke did he let go, a steady stream leaving his lips, broken into small dust and particles by the air.

 

He breathed out.

 

Breathed out whatever was stuck in him, lining the walls of his mouth, mingling in the dust in his lungs, caught in the narrow pipe of his throat. There were names there of course, ones that were thought and half-said. They drifted—those names—and shimmered as the dull light of the world outside slithered into the dark suite. The dust of those fallen glimmered for a moment, said their goodbyes to a man they respected or perhaps feared or perhaps envied or perhaps also wished him dead alongside them. And then they were gone as his breath pushed them where the light could not touch them, could never touch them. They sank into the fibers of the carpet and rested.

 

There were also memories or dreams or nightmares that he had tried to recalled or held his breath for—held too long that his face grew deadly pale and then, deadly blue. There were memories or dreams or nightmares that choked him, swelled in his throat like a tumor and never taken out. He let those go too, gave them their peace, gave him new space for new memories or dreams or nightmares whichever found its home within his mind first.

 

He breathed out.

 

And then he tried breathing in. Breathe in the filtered air of the room, the air that had smoke wafting throughout. He breathed in as Makoto breathed out as if the sleeping man gave him life the same way the God breathed into Adam made of patted mud and clay and breathed into Eve, made the same. And with the very same breath they curled their tongues in their cheeks and hissed out lies with the ease of the snake.

 

Sousuke Yamazaki curled his tongue in his mouth, taste buds burnt from the smoke again. His eyes shifted to lights and sirens of a police car weaving its way through the highway. His warm breath fogged up the windowpane.

 

He confessed with that very breath and waited for it to reach God’s ears, finally ready to reap what he had sewn with the devil-gifted tongue.

 

 

 

 

The sheets shifted beside him. Makoto Tachibana’s warm body pressed closer to him, yet didn’t flinch when he touched clothes that were too cold, barely warmed up by his body heat. Instead, Sousuke felt Makoto’s arms wrap around his waist and press himself into his side, melting into the cold as if ice was his home, as if the weather was sweltering hot and the cold was merely coolness from a refreshing drink or a nice working fan that could alleviate the heat or even a small snow rabbit trying to keep its form. Sousuke’s free hand dropped and carded lightly through Makoto’s hair, soft locks that felt like running water.

 

“What time is it?” asked Makoto, voice cracking from the depths of a pleasant sleep. His eyes remained shut, but Sousuke figured it would be no different if he opened them now. The sun was not out today; the room was dark and people moved on as people should.

 

Sousuke checked the time on his phone, the phone he gripped so tightly as he waited with the passing hours. “Almost 8,” he answered as he dropped the device and his hand back onto the bed. He tilted his head down to get a better glimpse of the mop of ashy brown hair, mused and ruffled. “Why?”

 

Makoto groaned as he pulled himself closer, seeking comfort in the cold of Sousuke’s body, burrowing himself in the sliver of chill for one last moment before he pulled himself away. His hands pushed his hair back as he rubbed his face, wiping off the sleep like dirt and grime. The brunette rolled his shoulders, the shoulder blades coming together like outlines of wings and disappearing just as quickly beneath his smooth skin. “I’m going back to school and trying to get a medical degree this time around. I have lectures around 10 and I was planning on dropping by the bar to check up on whoever was there before I go to campus,” he replied casually, as if this was another routine, as if Makoto was slipping on a shirt different from the one he normally wore but figured it was still a shirt in the end.

 

Sousuke’s eyes lowered. “Are you doing this because of Daiki?”

 

“Yes,” the other answered without a moment of hesitation, without the lingering sadness and melancholy that entered his voice usually or the downward turn of his lips or the tired droop to his eyes. “But, this is for me too.”

 

Sousuke caught the glimpse of a smile lifting the edges of Makoto’s mouth. The green eyes caught his teal eyes and he saw how clear, how fresh and clean and alive they looked, drawing him into the colors of spring fields and green jade that adorned emperors of dynasties past. “I got tired of being just human. There’s just too much tragedy in the story.”

 

He thought of himself. His tragedy, surely that’s what the end will look like, right?

His world began in fire and now, it’ll end in ice.

 

“Then what are you now, if you’re tired of being human?”

 

Makoto laughed breathless as he began to pull the comforter off him. “Maybe I’ll try a hand at being a god.” It was the flash of the exposed and discolored patch of skin that made Sousuke reach out and stop him from leaving his side. His eyes were trained on the wound. The green eyes followed to where Sousuke stared. The bullet wound on his thigh had faded from the purple concaved dip to a paler shade of Makoto’s skin. It looked like a supernova exploding in the darkness of the universe, bright and unbelievable and the ends stretched out like rays from the sun—a sun that was nowhere to be seen today. Perhaps, it slept beneath Makoto’s skin.

 

“What? Does it sound ridiculous?”

 

“No,” he answered as his hand rested gently on the nape of Makoto’s neck, letting his fingers stroke and brush the small hairs that curled out. “I can strangely believe it.” Falling back onto the bed, Sousuke glanced up at the dark ceiling. “You were like a god in my dreams the first time we met. Did I ever tell you that?”

 

Makoto laughed again in disbelief as he slithered out of the comfortable bed to find his clothes strewn on the floor. “No. You’re making it up.”

 

“It’s true,” Sousuke defended. His eyelids fluttered closed and flickered through the catalogue with nimble fingers, searching and searching with the same diligence as finding a beloved book in the library archives or searching through a grandmother’s recipe book for a meal that encompassed home. “That time in the ambulance truck, when I was shot, I had a dream.”

 

He heard the gentle padding of Makoto’s feet heading towards the bathroom. “I don’t know where I was. Maybe I was in Japan, maybe it was just a made up place in my head, but I was lying in the snow and it was cold. I didn’t notice how cold it was at first because I was so preoccupied.”

 

The faucet began to run, and he heard the water splash against the sink. “There was this huge sakura tree, blooming flowers. God, it was beautiful. Honestly, I didn’t care if I was dead. It was still a fantastic sight. And then, I heard your voice. It sounded like it came from the tree, as if you were talking to me.”

 

“What did I say?”

 

Sousuke’s lips curled into a smile and he let one eye open to catch sight of Makoto, dabbing his damp face with a towel. “What? You don’t remember?”

 

“I just want to hear you say it.”

 

He closed his eyes again to grasp the fleeting dream, that purgatorial dream. “You told me you wouldn’t let me die.” Sousuke breathed out, breathed out the chill of the buds that had seeped themselves into his veins. He opened his eyes and turned his head to look at Makoto. “That’s what a god would say, isn’t it?”

 

Makoto stopped rubbing his face and moved it away from his eyes. Jade colored eyes that empires craved and built themselves upon, melted and broke and shaped and lusted over.

 

“That’s why it’s not ridiculous, you being a god. It’s not to me.”

 

Sousuke felt his phone vibrate, the sensation putting his heartbeat off rhythm. The flower buds of his dreams began to bloom in the confines of his veins.

 

 

 

The ice cubes clinked against the glass as Seijuurou brought the drink of whiskey up to his lips. His eyes are trained straight ahead, watching the bar tender wipe the glasses down until it was as clear and transparent. He never once looked over at Sousuke when he entered the bar, but he did notice it flicker briefly at Makoto while he went up to a group, bandaged and battered, sitting at one of the booths. They greeted him familiarly and their laughter drew a smile out of the tall man.

 

Sousuke settled into the bar stool beside the red headed man and tapped the counter to motion for a drink of his own.

 

“You’ve got some balls with the stunt you pulled off last night,” Seijuurou spoke, muffled by the glass. Those gold eyes shifted away from the friendly sight and back to the bar tender, twisting the top off of the decanter and pouring Sousuke’s scotch. “Rare of you to bring someone fresh in.”

 

Sousuke steadied his breath as he took glass that was slid to him. “He’s not a part of the group.”

 

“Hmm,” the other man’s throat rumbled as he swiveled in his stool and looked over, appraised Makoto from his seat as he propped himself with his elbows on the polished wooden counter. Sousuke didn’t turn. “So, Sou-chan, what were you thinking?”

 

Sousuke felt the pooling gold eyes burn into his skin with just a simple shift of Seijuurou’s head and the stare from the corner of his eye. He ran a finger down to catch the trickling sweat from the condensation on the whiskey glass.

 

“I want out,” Sousuke confessed as he brought the glass to his lips.

 

The red head scoffed with his laugh. The cubes clinked with the small shake of his hand. “You’re fucking with me.”

 

“Maybe.”

 

Seijuurou fell silence. His body still as stone, a looming statue beside him with eyes narrowing, stripping his skin off until he saw his skeleton. It burned. The same stinging sensation one felt after rubbing salt on an open wound. Sousuke grit his teeth and endured the silent interrogation.

 

“What changed your mind?”

 

Sousuke didn’t answer. He didn’t answer and that was answer enough. Answer enough for Seijuurou to turn his glance back to the table where Makoto probably was still, looking over the men like a mother tending to scraped knees instead of large gashes and wounds, and soothed those forced trembling laughs into easy inhales and exhales.

 

He clicked his tongue and swirled the glass in his hand, taking his time with his whiskey, taking his time as always when he thought, and that was what made Seijuurou Mikoshiba dangerous.

 

“Hypothetically speaking,” Seijuurou began, “Let’s say you did want to leave Samezuka after and only after” he clarified with a point of his index finger towards Sousuke in the hand that precariously held the glass tumbler, “the power grab was over. You know, I can’t let you leave the way you are.”

 

The chair swiveled again, the bony knee pressed against Sousuke’s thigh and the red head leaned in, breath smelling smoky and sweet from the alcohol and his face darkening as he shifted away from the little light of the room. “You’d still want to leave? For that guy?”

 

Sousuke glanced over his shoulder, watched Makoto’s smooth profile concentrate, but shift slightly with a twitch of a smile or a furrow of his brow. His hands were red and bloody from sutures coming undone. _Where were his gloves?_ he thought.

 

He ran a hand through his hair, pushing it back from his eyes as he let a sad smile cross his lips and fade just as quickly as it came. “It’s too late now. Too much has happened for me to consider that option now. Timing,” Sousuke curled and uncurled his hand, turning it into a fist and letting it go. He felt his nails dig into the palm, felt the muscle constrict around his fingers and relaxing as he let go. “I was never good at that, following a pace.”

 

Seijuurou laughed as he slapped his hand, hard and sturdy and grounding onto Sousuke’s back. “I knew you were shit with timing the first time we met.”

 

The memory warmed its way to the surface, broke free from the ice. It rose itself from time like a corpse breaking free from the compressed and hard ground of a grave, untouched in years, but remembered once in a while with flowers and incense burning when needed. He could feel the shard of glass digging into his palm as he gripped it tighter in a hand that before that moment knew nothing of killing, of murder, of uncontrollable rage, a hand that was fostered to flip pages and read and break and part the waters of the calm pool as he dove in.

 

And timing was never his greatest asset. When he was about to graduate, move out, grow up and live on as everyone else had done, Sousuke stepped on a toe during time’s waltz, stumbled in his lead, hesitated with each back step. He fumbled, and never found the right footing again.

 

It was this awkward, mishap dance with time that led to Seijuurou.

 

The arm of the memory broke free from the ground, twisting in the air. The loose flesh clinging to the hand stretched and briefly felt the warmth of the sunlight and the cold, wet muddy grave.

 

The smell of blood fading, replaced by the stench of rotting bodies, surrounding him. The frighteningly calm smile who didn’t flinch at the sight of the massacre and the culprit lying in it all. There was the devil’s smile that curled as he spoke of a debt, a debt that must always be repaid even if it was not your own.

 

 _You killed the man, took his life before I could. Who are you,_ the devil asked, _to command death as you do?_ There was a flash of white teeth, deviant, planning, asking a question that he knew the answer to as if he himself was God. And he extended a graceful and gentlemanly hand, and pried the broken glass from his fingers and replaced the digging shard with his own stinging and bitingly cold flesh, clawing open the wounds with his filed nails.

 

In a voice sweet enough to send chills down one’s spine, and with a smile engraved on the lips of charismatic cult leaders, he repeated the question, repeated it until it sounded like a lulling hum, a wordless song faintly recalled. _Who are you? Do you really think you’ll make it out alive in this world?_

 

And it a helpless daze, the teen, who thought his life had slipped out of his fingers as quickly as water cupped in one’s hand or felt himself stuck and sinking like an ant caught in a spider’s web or caught in the amber, later crystalized, dying with the world tinted golden and iridescent, took the devil’s hand because it was the only hand, the only one moving. Perhaps, he should have rested his fingers on the devil’s wrist, sense the nothingness where a pulse should have been, and slip away.

 

Those without a heart should not be trusted after all.

 

As the memories got their thrill of life again within him, swelled up and stretched out like a net being casted in his mind, Sousuke turned to Seijuurou beside him, who still flashed pearly white and menacing teeth. “I’m sorry,” he began. He wasn’t sure what he was apologizing for or preparing an apology for. The words tumbled out of him as if it was necessary in the moment.

 

“You know I’d have a pound of your skin sliced off of you about now for that fucking stunt last night. But,” Seijuurou’s shoulders rose and fell in a shrug, a friendly and familiar smile stretched on his lips, “You took care of that shit from the 5th, right? Kodama or whatever the fuck his name was?”

 

“Yeah, I took care of it.”

 

The smell of bleach attacking the senses, overpowering and noxious. The sight of a butchering room, spotless and gleaming, as if pristine and unused. The screams that scratched themselves into the walls, threats sworn and taken to the grave.

 

“Good,” said Seijuurou with a definite and pleased nod. “Let’s just make that even between us then. I was going to flay the bastard anyways for Momo, but if you’ve taken care of it, what’s there to be fuss about?”

 

He settled his empty glass on the table and propped his elbows behind him on the counter, a smug smile. From the side, it looked similar to that smug smile he saw that night that belonged to Imada Jiro, the second man at the top of the pyramid, the one who laughed with his back turn to the bloodshed, who left as easy as a cat wandering in and out of an alleyway when he had his fill.

 

“Ah, I’m sure it’ll be over soon.”

 

Sousuke moved his gaze higher to take in the red head’s face again. “Why do you say that?” He tilted his half empty cup from side to side, listening to the ice clink, bucking against one anoher.

 

“Just a feeling,” Seijuurou answered. “Never doubt a man’s intuition.” He stretched and let out a large yawn. His joints popped as he arched. His fingers thrummed against the wood counter behind him, each one falling into place like a domino. “What’s that guy’s name?”

 

“Tachibana Makoto,” he answered, downing the rest of his drink.

 

“Tachibana Makoto, Tachibana Makoto. He a doctor?”

 

“He’s working on it. He was an EMT before. He’s the one that was on call when I got shot.”

 

“That’s some wild card you got in your pocket there, Sou-chan.”

 

Sousuke pulled the carton from his jacket pocket and patted for his lighter. He couldn’t say that he wanted this, that he wanted Makoto to be here. _Yes you did_. He couldn’t say that he wanted Makoto to care for these broken and rag tag gang. _Yes you did._ He couldn’t say that he wanted Makoto’s life to intertwine with his men just as tightly woven as he was to them. _Yes you did._

 

He couldn’t tell Seijuurou.

 

He kept silent and tucked the cigarette between his lips, lit up and inhaled deeply. Sousuke turned to Seijuurou, smiled as Imada Jiro did and blew a steady stream of smoke into the other man’s face who laughed and swatted it away with his hand and patted Sousuke’s shoulder before getting up and walking over to Makoto, smiling and introducing himself.

 

He couldn’t tell Seijuurou he was going to smoke the colony before the sting’s venom spread to his heart.

 

Maybe for once, he had perfect timing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there! Done reading? Did you like it? I hope you did. I thought it would be better to say it here than at the top, but I'd like to apologize for the long break before this chapter. I rewrote it several times and this is the version I settled with. This is the penultimate chapter and I realize it's slow for the chapter so close to the end. I suppose this is going to compensate for all the things that will happen after. So, next chapter--hopefully, I'll get it up MUCH faster--is the final chapter for the series. And I swear this time it's not a /maybe/ last chapter type of thing and drag it on even more. It will DEFINITELY be the last chapter for the sake of the characters and the plot. 
> 
> And if it's not, someone build a time machine go back in time before I begin writing chapter 24, and punch me in the face.


	24. Chapter 24

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The milky eye that held the swirls of the galaxies and planets stared at him. Imada Jiro stared at Sousuke, but could not see him fully or perhaps it was in this half-blind state that the man saw everything too well. He saw the universe open and close in that cataract-stricken eye and saw the earth turn and watched as the city rose with each streamlined building year after year with the other.

The milky eye that held the swirls of the galaxies and planets stared at him. Imada Jiro stared at Sousuke, but could not see him fully or perhaps it was in this half-blind state that the man saw everything too well. He saw the universe open and close in that cataract-stricken eye and saw the earth turn and watched as the city rose with each streamlined building year after year with the other.

 

The longer Imada Jiro stared at him, stared into him, gaze upon him with the weight of the universe in one eye too white that it looked like a soft blue and the other so brown, so dark, it looked black in comparison, the tenser his grip grew on the knife in his hands, the knife that had cut down so many other men, drowned in hot blood and sharpened by shrill screams. Tonight, the tip rested on the rough textured throat of the older man who sat on the bench, the second bench under the bare branches of the maple tree. Sousuke stood, looking down on him, hair thinning and tie loose around his neck. Imada Jiro looked like a businessman, tired from a long day’s work.

 

This all must be karmic, Sousuke thought. He fought the temptation to look across at the third bench, at the ghostly memories of two men at ease with one another, drinking coffee together in silence, comfortable under the maple tree with the most leaves. If he looked, they’d look back at him, turn their heads and gaze at him.

 

“I can feel the trembling in your hand,” the older man said, his Adam’s apple rising and falling carefully along the edge of the sharpened point. The eyes lowered to catch the handle of the knife and Sousuke’s fingertips, numb from the cold.

 

“Are you afraid of me?”

 

He was.

 

His bones screamed.

 

His heart rattled.

 

His legs grew tired and lead heavy.

 

But, Sousuke Yamazaki was not afraid of the half-blind man with the universe for one eye and the darkest pit of earth in the other holding his own butterfly knife, ready to kill him with the ease of breathing. Instead, it was the reflection of himself he saw in the old man. That was what he saw the first time in the warehouse that stopped him, froze him, shook out the strength in his calves and made the hand reaching for his gun sweaty and slippery against the cold weapon.

 

This was who he would have become if Makoto did not come when he did or come at all. This was who he would be if Makoto did not sew in empathy and compassion and humanity back into him with one stitch at a time. He was still afraid, because Imada Jiro could still be his future, if the timing was not right, if his resolve was not as strong as an executioner’s. He could still become Imada Jiro if he did not move on.

 

A chill raced from his legs up, down his arms, all gathering into his heart to jolt it awake with adrenaline.

 

“You’ve never been talkative, have you?” The man smiled, his sagging cheeks lifting. In the daylight, he looked friendly, elderly. But it was his steady eyes and the easing Chesire smile that hinted at the man in the warehouse, the one wrapped the screams and bloodshed and violence like a warm shawl.

 

The eyes rolled back into the old man’s head as he closed his eyes and tipped his head back, supported by the top of the back of the bench. The smile remained. “I remember when you first joined us. You’ve grown a lot since then Sousuke,” Jiro said fondly, as if a grandfather looking upon his first grandson after years of being apart. There was a chilling warmth, like trusted hands wrapping around your throat and doing the unexpected.

 

His upper body shook gently as he laughed, the tip of the knife barely scraping his throat. “I told Asai that if he should ever want to hand off his crown, he should place it on your head. And look at you now, a dog dragged around by Mikoshiba.”

 

One lid open, revealing the white eye. The visionless gaze bore into Sousuke, ripped off his flesh and exposed his bones. “Where did that young man go? The one with the bite?”

 

“He was killed,” Sousuke finally answered.

 

“Killed?” Jiro laughed again, his body shaking, the knife almost digging into and breaking the thin and age spotted skin. His eyes watered and his hand lifted up to the corners of his eyes to wipe away the tears. “Killed, he says,” he said to no one and to everyone, to the galaxies trapped in his eye, to the trees bare enough to hear. “I guess we can do that. Make a man into a living corpse.”

 

Imada Jiro fell back into his seat. A red indent of where the knife pricked his neck remained.

 

“But, that’s unfortunate.” His displeasure scratched the air, nails raking against a chalkboard. He repeated those two words, repeated them like a chanting hymn spoken for the dead to ease their souls and usher them onto the next life. Both eyes opened now. “So who is this coward?”

 

“A ghost. A ghost of all the people you killed, and have ordered to kill, and stole and beat up until the person can’t even recognize themselves. A ghost of all the consequences of your greed and lust and power.” Sousuke’s teal eyes narrowed, his grip on the knife grew tighter until his knuckles turned white.

 

“Are you going to kill me, then?”

 

“Yes.”

 

Jiro sighed, his shoes grinded against the snow floor, sinking deep until it hit soil. The sole of his shoes crunched against the dirt and the dust and maybe the crushed bones of other cowards buried six feet deep. His head tilted to the side, the shell of his ear brushing against his shoulder. With narrowed eyes, he watched Sousuke, watch the subtle shake in his hand return. “So much potential. Frankly, I’m disappointed. I suppose this is what it feels like to raise a boy in today’s age.” He licked his dry and cracked lips, lifted a finger to scratch his age-spotted, sunken cheek dully and for show. “Tell me, Sousuke, have you made your peace?”

 

 

• • •

 

 

 

The days had grown to be long and the nights longer. The winds and the snow lashed against the brick and mortar of the building. There was a strange peace, a peace held together by hands who only knew how to craft death and tragedy and misery. The pads of their fingers were all scratched up, pricked, callous and hard.  They hid themselves, burrowed themselves in the cozy bar from the snarls of the winter beast outside.

 

They hid, that’s what was in their hearts.

 

But on paper, on the surface, on their rough faces, they were preparing, preparing to crown Seijuurou Mikoshiba, preparing to continue the long war even though they’ve forgotten why—shaken out of them with so many brothers turned to corpses around them. The purple of sleepless nights cradled their eyes, and yet, they smiled and laughed and polished guns they hoped would not fail them in the end.

 

The long and final stretch.

 

Sousuke Yamazaki watched the news religiously, woke up to it, lulled himself to sleep with it, waiting and waiting for the final judgment. But it had to be soon. Because Seijuurou Mikoshiba had a gut instinct that the end was coming and Sousuke Yamazaki realized that karma had not reached him yet, and karma never closed its eye and turn its back on the imbalance of the natural order.

 

Karma was everything, but blind.

 

That’s how Sousuke Yamazaki returned. His eyes drifted up to the two-story house with shriveled vines climbing up the front of the house, clinging to the home as if a desperate desire to be together. It was that very sight that made Sousuke’s hold on Makoto’s hand grew tighter.

 

They had wandered from their path.

 

They had taken the long way back from the train station.

 

They were aimless and it pulled him here.

 

Sousuke exhaled. His breath, a visible drifting white wisp. His teal eyes trailed each corner, from the growing weeds of the patches of lawn that circled the house, to the white paint of the house, now a lackluster and sun eaten ivory.

 

Makoto pushed up the frame of his glasses that slipped from the bridge of his red nose. He moved his gaze from the house they stood in front of to Sousuke and back again. “Where is this?” he asked. “Is this your home?”

 

“No,” Sousuke answered as the vines of his fingers locked themselves onto Makoto’s hand tighter as the other pushed open the rusted gate. The hinges creaked, cried, and groaned from being jostled after decades of being untouched. “I lived here with my uncle and aunt after my parents died.”

 

What did Makoto see with this run down house that was being eaten away by time, wasted away with the years? Could he see him young, see him with a heart, see him with a backpack slung on one shoulder as he walked to and from school each day? Sousuke bent down without releasing Makoto’s hand. He pushed the wilted potted plant that was placed beside the door and took out the key from under it. He slipped the key into the lock and heard the familiar click of small bolts released from their position.

 

His hand rested on the doorknob. He paused before he turning it, fearing they’d still be there, mummified or rotten and eaten away by maggots. Eyes white and glossy and open. And just the slightest shift in the house would move their bodies, roll their heads, and they’d gaze at him until he moved their heads away, away from him.

 

“What’s wrong?” Makoto reached out, his fingers icy brushed against the sweat that was forming at the base of his neck. It startled him awake, restarted his heart. 

 

He didn’t answer. Instead, he twisted the door open, stirring the dust that had built up inside. He coughed and pulled Makoto in as he crossed the threshold. The large windows were parted open, letting in whatever natural light could reach the interior of the house. It took a while for his eyes to adjust to the dimness. He expected to see the blood splatter, a pale and lifeless hand peaking from the corner that turned into the kitchen.

 

But, there was nothing.

 

Just a thick veil of dust, the animation of his memories and the faint smell he’d rather not put a name to though he’d use it a thousand times before. It was the conscience he grew that held his tongue.

 

Sousuke breathed in and breathed out again, his sweaty grip releasing Makoto. Carefully, he slipped off his shoes; though it was probably better not to. He took a slow and hesitant step into the house and tucked his hands into his pockets as he wandered down the corridor, looked over the furniture, the living room, the bedrooms. “My parents died when I was eight,” Sousuke said as he began to retrace the steps of the eight-year-old boy who roamed the house equally tentative and shy. “There was a fire and my mother protected me from it. My father’s older brother took me in. He lived here with his new wife. She was a professor at the university. He wasn’t around much. Not in the beginning at least. He was the vice president of a large corporation, so he always worked until late.” He could hear the soft pads of feet that moved from one point of the house to the other. Sousuke followed. He suppose Makoto followed too though he didn’t dare turn to look.

 

“I liked my aunt,” he continued as he pushed open another door gently. “She read me stories and sang songs even though they were probably too mature for children.” His lips tugged into a fond smile. “But, she cared about me and really that was all that mattered.” His tense shoulders fell. “Then, my uncle was fired from his job and he became an alcoholic. He had anger issues and beat up my aunt whenever his rages got out of control. We accumulated some debt and he ended up getting loans from Samezuka.” He shut the door to the room and moved onto the next. The door that faced the living room, his room. His bed was still there. There were a few taped photos that had faded from the exposure to sunlight. He couldn’t make out who was in the pictures even if he tried to find it. Sousuke settled on the bed, heard it give a soft creak under his weight as the mattress sank. He folded his hands and stared out the window from his bed, to the vines that threaded itself outside, forming prison bars of dead foliage. “One day, I came home from school to some yelling. I heard something being broken and I saw my uncle stab my aunt. I got angry too.” Sousuke let out an unintentional laugh. “I wonder if that runs in the family, anger problems. I never saw my dad get into fits of rage, but then again, I don’t really remember him much anymore.” He looked down at his hands, threaded and locked his fingers together as he returned back to the story. “I grabbed a broken shard and killed him, too. Even bashed his head against the counter. Maybe I wanted to make sure he was dead.”

 

Sousuke breathed. “And then Seijuurou found me. My uncle still had a debt to pay and since I was the only one there alive, he took me in.”

 

Finally, he turned his head, saw Makoto stand by the doorframe with his head resting against it, watching him. Even in the dim flood of light in the room, they were still clear and green and unwavering.

 

“Why did you bring me here?” he asked. His voice was gentle, words soft enough to stroke his hair and caress his skin.

 

He didn’t answer. This was not a place for answers, only confessions. He pictured the eight-year-old boy standing across from him, back facing the nature born prison bars. He needed to speak what he could not before, apologize to the innocent boy burned and buried and scattered in two houses, never finding his peace.

 

 

 

• • •

 

 

He watched Seijuurou duck into the tinted car, watched the door shut behind him, and watched it roll away from the sidewalk and disappearing down the road. Sousuke stood with his back against the brick wall outside, not yet ready to go in yet. He’d finish his smoke first, calm himself before he broke the news to the rest—that the day was coming. Tomorrow at three in the morning, the bewitching hour.

 

There was a soft clack of footsteps and rounding the corner from the barrier of high rising bushes, Sousuke saw Minami—skinnier, hair mused, and an unsightly amount of wrinkles on his white button down shirt. The purple crystal colored eyes caught Sousuke’s gaze. The tired expression flickered with unease before he fell to Sousuke’s side, pulling out his own cigarette and lighter.

 

“Didn’t think I was going to see your face around here anymore,” Sousuke commented as he took a long drag and dropped his hand back to his side, ashing the cigarette.

 

“I was building up my patience and tolerance for pussies like you, boss.”

 

“How’d that go?” he asked with a quirk of his brow and the slight tilt of his head to catch the sight of the other man who pressed the back of his head against the wall.

 

“Well I want to punch you and vomit.” He breathed out a thin wisp of smoke. A sly and familiar smile crossed the slender face, a Chesire grin that only suited Minami. “But, I say it’s a vast improvement from me wanting to slit your throat.”

 

Sousuke’s lips curled and brows rose in a mock, impressed expression.

 

He slowly turned the cigarette between his fingers, his thumb flicked the end of the stick, tapping off the excess ash some more. “How’s Uozumi?”

 

“Better, healing. And a stupid fuck for trying to come back here to help when he can’t even stand without doubling over in pain.” Minami turned his head and Sousuke followed suit. His eyes were narrowed, scanning him, analyzing him, more wary than before. “Being a yakuza’s your calling, boss,” he said finally before dropping his half burned cigarette and snubbing it out with his shoes, a black splatter against white snow. “You’re like the drugs we push out, get us all addicted and dependent on you. And we crawl back for more because what else do we have.”

 

Minami pushed himself off the wall with the foot propped by it, ready to walk into Sharkhouse. Sousuke called out before he was out of earshot.

 

“Minami.”

 

The man didn’t turn, but stopped in his tracks. “What?”

 

“Keep Uozumi away from here for a couple of days. He’s going to hear things and it’d be safer if he comes back when the heat is gone.”

 

Minami looked over his shoulder. Lines crinkled his forehead with his furrowed brows. “What’s happening?”

 

“Seijuurou is giving Asai the ultimatum tomorrow.”

 

The lips thinned into a line, unconvinced. “That’s not enough for a warning like that. What’s going to happen to you?”

 

Sousuke didn’t answer. He busied himself by continuing smoking under the feline gaze. Finally, Minami scoffed and turned his head back again. “Whatever. I’m not fucking stupid like you or Uozumi so I definitely won’t let him do that.”

 

“Thanks.”

 

“Fuck, I really need to vomit,” Minami barked before pulling open the door and slamming it behind him.

 

 

 

• • •

 

 

 

His fingers ran along the cold metal frame of the room, his eyes flickered from each corner and space and fell along each smooth and polished wall until it rested on the crate in the middle of the room, sitting in the middle between two titanium hooks twisted into the ceiling. The crate was cracked and splintered, discolored and old. Sousuke could already hear the sound of groaning strain if he put the slightest bit of weight on it.

 

He hoped it would be thrown away later instead of tucked in a corner, poisoning the space with the past.

 

“You needed a proper space, right? How about using this room? It’s cold enough like most ORs and it’s big enough to have the operating table. You just have to install the proper lights and get the guys to bring in some proper equipment.” Sousuke scratched the back of his ear. “Whatever hospital stuff you need.”

 

He was sure it was strange to Makoto to be gifted a freezer room in the back of the bar, but Sousuke planned to rewrite it all, white out the memories and replace them with better, with the golden touch Makoto provided. Write it all over with the steadfastness of killing the wolves with wolfsbane and luring in the bees.

 

The man beside him laughed, breathless, confused, finding the offer a bit ridiculous for reality. “You’re not serious.” He paused before adding with a wary turn of his head to look at Sousuke, “Are you?”

 

Sousuke smiled as his hand reached out to graze the back of Makoto’s arm, running it up and down, feeling the solid form of flesh and bone and stability and sureness wrapped all together in a man. “Why would I joke about this? My boys, they get into a lot of trouble, lots of scuffs and cuts and they trust you. It only makes sense that you set up base here. I mean, I’m not trying to tie you down to them, but I would hope you can stop by once in a while to check up on them now and again.”

 

Makoto’s brows furrowed, but his lips tugged into a half-smile, the carved silhouette of a crescent moon trying to find its place in the sky. He tried to read the subtext like the blind feeling the braille ridges, forming words and sentences together by how the surface rose and fell. Sousuke continued, keeping his hand steady on Makoto’s arm. “Who knows, maybe one day you’ll want to expand and open up some clinic. This would be a great spot, too. It’s in a pretty packed neighborhood and some people don’t want to go to the hospital since there’ll be a long wait. Plus, they’ll be greeted by you and, who wouldn’t want that?”

 

His forehead relaxed from those deep and creasing lines.  His green eyes shifted to look back at the bare, cold steel room. Sousuke wondered if he smelled the faint bleach odor lingering in the sleek walls, clean and pearlescent. The burning chemical scent reminded of a home that was not a home, a man with his father’s eyes that held neither his father’s kindness or his father’s soul, and a bookcase large and grand that stretched from wall to wall with leather-bound and faded hardcover books disappearing as debt collectors knocked on their doors.

 

“It’s just a thought,” he added.

 

Sousuke’s smile returned and he gave Makoto’s arm a gentle squeeze before turning back to him and leading him away from the chill, though Makoto let his gaze linger half a second longer, a half second of longing and a half second of dreams stirring before following the other man’s lead.

 

He dropped his grip from his forearm to his hand, long and smooth fingers, slightly dry and cracked from the cold. He laced their fingers together, a web work of his desires and fears all meshed together by his touch. Sousuke felt curved knuckles and a gentle heartbeat pulsing beneath the skin. And Sousuke Yamazaki pulled Makoto Tachibana along, not looking back, only reassured that Makoto was there by the solid hand in his.

 

It was dangerous to look back. That was what fairytales and folktales and poetry crafted by the skilled of tongue warned to their offspring, divided and multiplied like stars scattered. And if it was repeated so often, surely there was a reason, surely

 

But, Makoto pulled him back, stopped him from running away and asked, “Why does it sound like you’re saying goodbye to me?”

 

And he told himself not to turn, told himself not to look back, told himself and told himself until the words burned themselves on the back of his eyelids and when he blinked, he saw them, bright and blazing and written with the same sorrow in the voice.

 

Sousuke looked back.

 

How human.

 

His lips eased themselves into a smile. “I never told you I love you, did I?”

 

 

• • •

 

 

 

He left Makoto, asleep and covered with his jacket as a makeshift blanket in his office. Despite being such a large group, they left silent. If a stranger had passed by the bar so late at night, saw all those men file out of the doors, they probably would have thought it was a funeral procession.

 

What can be said about the events that occurred next? The honeybees returned to the hive, retuned to where the queen sat, unmoving. Shimamura Asai, the 5th leader of the Samezuka organization, watched Seijuurou with a strange boredom, unsurprised and unflinching from the sudden fanfare, unperturbed that all his men piled at his feet. Seijjurou cocked his gun and nestled it on the old man’s forehead. He asked whether or not he would have to pull the trigger.  

 

“That was how Samezuka was born and how it will continue to live. Kill me,” he spoke, coarsely. “You should know by now that you have to take what you want. It will never be handed over.”

 

Shimamura Asai was allowed one final breath, a quick breath later drowned out by the gunshot.

 

 

 

 

 

Sousuke wandered, wandered because his heart felt restless. His feet took him back to peaceful times, times of routine and old skin. He found himself back at the hospital and saw karma sitting on the bench, the second bench under the tree.

 

Imada Jiro waited for him and he gave a friendly wave when he saw him as clear as day with the milky blind eye and the brown eyes so dark they looked black. The knife he carried grew heavier in his pocket, aching to cut the man down, the one who started it all, the one who called the hit on him and on Makoto. The man whose nails were as black with dirt as a demon’s heart.

 

The words of Samezuka blazed within Imada Jiro’s bones. He wanted to keep living, so he took it. His hand flew to Sousuke’s wrist, the one that held the knife poorly up to his throat and jerked him forward. The knife flew out of his hands, dropping and sinking into the snowfield. He pushed the old man off of him, scrambled to grab the knife, but felt a strong but firm boney hand sink themselves onto the back of his head and ram it against the corner of the bench. His skin and folds along his eye, dry already from the cold, tore easily. He felt the biting cold claw at the open wound and blood turned to ice as it trickled down from his brow, down and into his eye.

 

Sousuke kicked Imada Jiro and stretched out to reach the knife, barely touching with his fingertips. He pulled himself forward, grabbed it and spun around. He easily knocked Jiro down on his back. The teal-eyed man prepared to sink the knife into his throat and slide it across easily.

 

He would’ve, if this did not happen here.

He would’ve if the past did not see him.

 

He heard them, sitting on the third bench under the tree with the most leaves for the season, now long gone.

 

 _What a monster,_ he heard Makoto’s voice, the old Makoto, the one that sounded light and unburdened.

 

 _Please, this is nothing new. A tiger can’t change his stripes. A man whose touch turns others to gold could never turn them back_. Sousuke looked up, looked at his former self stare back at him with bored eyes. If he killed Imada Jiro, he would be repeating the story. If he killed Imada Jiro, what would have changed?

 

He heard the old man’s lips tug into a smirk. “You have awful timing. Hesitancy is a man’s undoing.”

 

With that said, a flood of lights fell upon them as if the sun burned off the night and the winter clouds. “This is the police. Yamazaki Sousuke, drop your weapon!” a gruff voice shouted. It sounded vaguely familiar and his head turned slightly so he could catch a glimpse of who shouted. He saw the lean build and the soft red hair. He caught a flash of teeth, sharp and razor like, holding a gun securely as cops would.

 

He closed his eyes, felt half of the burden gone, relieved. The Heavens had heard his confession after all, picked up the handkerchief stained red with the blood of Kodama Matsu at the club that night and passed it on to the people who needed it, the ones who carried justice in their marrows and sat across from him with the clawing instinct in their gut that day and no way to prove it.

 

“You’re a cop,” he said with a ringing laugh. “I bought a cop beer and didn’t even know it.”

 

“I’ll make sure the judge know so he gives you a lesser sentence,” the man answered. Though he briefly joked, he fell back to his duty. “Yamazaki, I need you to drop that knife.”

 

The latter words became deaf to his ears. While he debated whether if he could kill Imada Jiro or not, he heard his name being called, ringing against the drown of the officer repeating the same demands and the laughter coming out a croak from Jiro’s throat. “Sousuke, don’t kill him.”

 

Makoto was out of breath. He didn’t have to turn around to see how he looked, face flushed and lashed red from the cold. But, he still called out to him, coaxed him to drop the knife, to go home with him.

 

“Why do you want to kill him?” the man finally asked when he regained his breath and realized persuading him was not enough.

 

Sousuke’s hands trembled. His resolved swayed like a pendulum, swinging from one extreme to the other. “He’s me,” he answered. “He’s me. If I don’t kill him, this is who I’ll become. This is the man I’ll grow into and I’ll either kill you or you’ll kill me. And, I can’t let you do that to yourself. I can’t let you become a murderer.” He inhaled the cold air, felt his lungs sting as he readied himself again.

 

Makoto quickly spoke up again, “Why did you show me that house? Why did you give me the freezer room?”

 

“Write it over. Write it all over. I’ve made a lot of mistakes, Makoto and I want you to just write over all that bad with the good.”

 

He didn’t hear Makoto come closer, didn’t sense his presence until he felt the hands pry the knife away, easily coming undone. “No,” he shouted, voice wavering as he tried to fight away from Makoto’s grasp. He felt the body pull him off Imada Jiro and pull him close to him. Fatigue and time fell heavy on his bones.

 

“I had a dream and you were there. You were sitting on this large tree like a flower blooming out of season, blooming in winter.” He laughed, his laughter ticklish as it brushed Sousuke’s ear. “A flower of winter, my flower.”

 

He cupped Sousuke’s face and pulled him into a kiss. It tasted sweet and fresh, like the tingle of snow melting and spring breaking free from the ice. Makoto’s lips dragged away from his mouth and disappeared from his skin as he pulled him closer, clinging to him. He was sure he tasted the blood that trickled from his forehead, smeared it on his own face. Their ears pressed against one another and Sousuke heard, outside of the sirens and his men shouting and Makoto’s shallow breathing, the sound of the ocean in the city, roaring as if he cupped a large seashell against his ear.

 

“You sound like the waves crashing,” Sousuke whispered with a smile wavering and with eyes stinging from relief, from desperation, and from the cold.

 

Makoto whispered an answer, one that was picked up by the howling winds as Sousuke’s body was pulled away, tearing him, uprooting him. The grip and the tension felt familiar, like a body pulled out of burnt rubble.

 

His vision grew blurred, tainted with his blood trickling down his face, slipping into his right eye. Sousuke Yamazaki titled his head back up to the sky and watched the snowfall, a gentle drift. And his body shook with laughter as he saw the sight above him. The snowflakes fell one by one, a faded red, almost pink, like sakura blossoms from his dreams.

 

 _That’s the sound of blood_. _That’s the sound of your life. Make sure you pay your debt to me._

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

She brushed away his hair and kept the book steady in her hands as she let him grow comfortable resting his back to his chest. It was her pause, the pause that sounded like the end that made the child grow concerned. Was it the end?

 

“It can’t end like that,” he whined as he tilted his head back, his teal eyes seeing only the underside of her smooth chin.

 

“Oh?” she said amused. “You know, Sou-chan, some mythologies from Greece end quite tragically in order to teach people lessons. Sad and tragic stories are easier to remember.”

 

He pouted and eyed the pages filled with small print and words he had to stop to sound out to form the words.

 

“I don’t like it,” he said, “The daughter can’t be stuck in gold like that.”

 

She laughed, her laughter warm, as warm as the hand that ran through his short hair and pulled him closer to her bosom. “Well I’ll tell you the ending that a lot of people leave out for the story, okay?”

 

The little boy quickly nodded, his heart fluttering in his chest.

 

“King Midas wept and wept. He cried quite a lot as would all people understanding the destruction of their greed and power. And you know what he did? Oh, that King Midas, he clasped his hands together,” She picked up his small hands and placed his palms together and she gripped them tightly, mimicking prayer. “And he called out to the gods. Help me. Please, help me. Take this power away from me, save my daughter. And the god Poseidon was moved. Gods have large hearts, you know Sou-chan, and so he came down and rewrote it all.”

 

“All of it?”

 

“All of it. So, Sou-chan, if you ever find yourself feeling less than human, pray and a god as compassionate as Poseidon will surely hear you.”

 

She shut the paperback book and slid out of the bed. The little boy eased himself into sleep, hands clasped into a prayer tucked under his cheek as he dreamt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That's it. It's been a wild and emotional ride. Thank you so much for following this series. Thank you so much for putting up with my purple prose. Thank you so much for putting up with the never-ending series of angst. I never expected the fic to be accepted so well and I surely didn't think that I (with my horrible track record) would finish writing a whole fic. I hope you enjoyed the ending. Out of all the endings (and there were like 3 major contenders two the dealt with death both fake and real death and this one), I felt this one suited the situation best. If anyone's curious what the "alternative" endings were, I'd be more than okay to share them though I won't actually write them cause god am I drained. 
> 
> But, again, thank you. I could not have finished this without your support and love.


	25. The Dusty Letter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But, it’s not the same. Sometimes things happen. Time’s cruel like that. It doesn’t stop. It continues to tick tick tick along even when we’re not together. Can I be honest about something? Sometimes, I turn to tell you something and then realize you’re not there. No one has seen that happen, but I still feel embarrassed, and stupid.

**W I N T E R**

 

January 20.

 

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? I feel a bit stupid for writing this because honestly, I see you every week. I talk to you, we laugh, and smile. But, it’s not the same. Sometimes things happen. Time’s cruel like that. It doesn’t stop. It continues to tick tick tick along even when we’re not together. Can I be honest about something? Sometimes, I turn to tell you something and then realize you’re not there. No one has seen that happen, but I still feel embarrassed, and stupid.

 

And…

 

It makes me miss you a lot. So I guess, maybe, this is why I’m writing. So things like that don’t happen. So I can tell you what’s on my mind at those precise moments without looking like an idiot. It’ll feel like you’re here again. Maybe I won’t send these at all. I’d feel dumb seeing you after you probably read these anyways. Yeah, so this will be to the imaginary you. God, writing that makes me feel stupid. I can just see you laughing. And can you picture me? Hands behind my face while your voice fills the room? It’s bound to happen, whether I send this letter or not.

 

But let’s see, what did I want to write to you about? Oh, it’s snowing. Well, it’s always been snowing though since it’s the middle of winter after all. The snow has been piling up outside and it’s been so tiring to clear off the pathway going into the building. Before your guys would scare off my patients, but I think it’s the weather this time around. Work has been slow. I suppose that’s a good thing. A full clinic doesn’t bode well, especially if it’s full because of your men. They’ve gotten themselves together. Seiijurou is a good leader, but that probably doesn’t mean much coming from me. He drops by often, especially now. He steals whatever leftover alcohol we have left in storage. He always tells me to tell you hi—of course, not that nicely and more teasingly, but I’m sure you know what he does.

 

He tells me he drops by so often now because winter reminds him of you. It reminds me of you too. Do you remember the first time we met? At the hospital. God, you asked to smoke after you were shot. Who does that? But, that’s beside the point. You remind me of winter. Now, sometimes whenever I exhale and I can see my breath swirl, white and foggy, I think of you.

 

Of how you smoke.

 

Your lips curling over the cigarette.

 

How your fingers balanced it delicately.

 

You’d probably deny it, but you’re a good person. You always have been. Was that a weird transition? Well, I just think of how someone like you can hold a cigarette like that, exhale the smoke all like clouds, and it’s so gentle and graceful that I figured that had to exist somewhere inside of you for smoking to be so beautiful.

 

For you, to be so beautiful.

 

Oh god, I’m beet red. My hands are trembling trying to even write. Yeah, this letter isn’t going anywhere. But I’ll drop by the prison again, sometime this week. I wish I could drop by every day honestly. I’ll have to close my eyes and let time do its work like it always does. Each second trickles in me, falls like sand in an hourglass. I’m waiting, waiting for the next months to pass. Can you believe it? By spring, I’ll touch you, all of you. I’ll know how warm you feel, warm as your laughter and bright as the sun. Your skin, under my fingertips. Your hair, like running through wild grass.

 

I’m a walking contradiction, aren’t I? I call you winter, and here I am thinking of you like spring.

 

But to me, you’re life and all its seasons--in all its violence and its gentleness.

 

I want to see you.

 

I want to kiss you.

 

I want to love you in this country that rises first from the darkness of the world.

 

Haven’t I become selfish?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been mulling on writing and I miss this baby fic of mine. This is super short, doesn't do much. It's a tiny epilogue and it clears up a few things for those who seemed confused on what happened, though I didn't write this thinking of trying to clear that up specifically. I just wrote because...I wanted to???? I felt inspired for this letter, for Makoto to have his own thoughts and peace aired. 
> 
> Also, I've been getting kudos and stuff for this story even after it's been finished for so long that I just wanted to take the time to thank old readers and new readers for taking the jump and following this rollercoaster of a story. It really means a lot as a writer, honestly.
> 
> Let me know what you think. Or, come chat with me on tumblr @kytsunee :)


End file.
